Lanterns' revival illuminates ancient craft

Lanterns around Mid-Autumn Festival are often associated with nights of bright displays, festive crowds and elaborate illuminated installations.

But in Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province, there is another way to experience them. For this year's Mid-Autumn Festival, which falls on Sept 25, a revived lantern market is bringing more than 60 vendors, handmade lanterns, food and performances into the city's old lanes, giving visitors more reason to linger beyond simply looking at the lights.

At Xi'nanli, a historical and cultural quarter in the heart of the city, visitors can follow glowing rabbit and lotus lanterns through the lanes, stopping for local snacks, browsing small shops, watching artisans make lanterns or trying their hand at the craft themselves. By night, the lanterns glow against gray-tiled roofs and historical facades, turning an ordinary walk through the old neighborhood into part of the festival.

The historical Daqiao Lantern Market in Xi'nanli is a centuries-old facility that was once an important hub for lantern manufacturing and sales before Nanjing's lantern trade gradually shifted toward the better-known Confucius Temple area.

Revived in 2020, the market has since evolved into a combination of lantern stores and craft experiences, food outlets, performances and activities that lead visitors through the old city.

Zheng Longwu hasn't missed a single edition in recent years. The market has satisfied his nostalgia for the days when he would go to the Confucius Temple to see and buy lanterns.

"There are many traditional designs, including fish and dragon lanterns, just the way I remember," said Zheng, who has lived in the neighborhood for more than five decades.

Today, Xi'nanli is much closer to his home, about a 15-minute walk away. He still comes with his family, sometimes bringing his grandchildren to see the lanterns and buy one or two small ones.

During the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), lantern viewing during the festival was one of Nanjing's most eagerly anticipated pastimes, drawing crowds into the streets.

Gan Xi, a Qing scholar and author of Baixia Suoyan, a collection of notes on old Nanjing, wrote that the Daqiao Lantern Market has existed "for a long time", describing crowds gathering around brightly colored silk lanterns.

The streets became a spectacle of their own. Temporary stalls decorated with lanterns lined the roads, musicians played inside and performers in theatrical costumes passed through on stilts and in land boats.

Now, visitors can again experience the tradition in the neighborhood where the market once flourished.

For Chen Weixin, a cultural and architectural researcher whose organization has been involved in the development of Xi'nanli since 2008, bringing the market back is a way to reconnect the historical neighborhood with its past.

"The lantern market is a way of drawing people into the old city. Once they come here for the lanterns, they begin to discover the neighborhood itself," Chen said.

Visitors can wander past historical residences, decades-old buildings and structures from different periods of modern Nanjing, while cafes, shops and cultural venues occupy the same streets.

The aim, Chen said, is to create a "living scene", where residents and visitors share the neighborhood.

Over the years, traditional lantern maker Lu Min has taught foreign visitors, including those from Germany and Spain, to make lanterns by hand.

For visitors wondering which lantern to take home, Lu recommends the lotus lantern.

The lotus has long carried a cultural meaning in China because it grows from muddy silt yet blooms pure and bright. As such, it expresses a wish for integrity and a clean, upright life, Lu said.