Thousands in Taiwan and China celebrate the Lantern Festival with high
hopes and rice dumplings
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 [February 13, 2025]
By SIMINA MISTREANU
NEW TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Thousands in Taiwan and China celebrated the
Lantern Festival on Wednesday by releasing paper lanterns into the night
sky, visiting light installations and snacking on glutinous rice
dumplings.
The holiday marks the end of the Lunar New Year period and is celebrated
annually on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calendar.
At the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in northern Taiwan, thousands lined
up in the rain to light up and observe wish lanterns. Among them were
Mae Alegonero and Shine Ceralvo, friends from the Philippines who work
in central Taiwan. They decided to join the event after seeing images of
the floating lanterns trending on TikTok.
“You experience this once in a lifetime,” Alegonero said, as she
sheltered under an umbrella with her friend and waited for the
festivities to begin.
Some visitors came from as far as Europe and Latin America to witness in
person the iconic images of paper lanterns filling the night sky.
Villagers in Taiwan started using paper lanterns more than a century ago
to signify to others it was safe to return after bandits raided their
communities. Today, the lanterns carry hopes of peace and prosperity in
the New Year.
For Charlotte Cadinot, an exchange student from France, the fascination
with wish lanterns started when she watched the Disney movie “Tangled,”
which features a scene where Princess Rapunzel and her beau wish upon
lanterns floating above a lake.
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A woman takes photos near lanterns at the Lantern Festival during
Yuanxiao, the fifteen day of the Lunar New Year in Beijing,
Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
 Cadinot and her boyfriend, Remi
Delmas, recreated that scene to an extent when they wrote their own
common wish on a lantern before releasing it into the sky.
A total of nine waves of lantern releases were interspersed with
music and dance performances as part of the festival. The stars of
the show were a pair of 12-foot (3.6 meters) pink and golden
snake-shaped lanterns, in a nod to the Year of the Snake.
People in China also celebrated the Lantern Festival, although no
officially-organized event there sees the release of large amounts
of paper lanterns.
Instead, Beijing residents lined up for glutinous rice dumplings —
the festival’s most sought-after snack — and visited light shows
across the city. The largest among them, at the Beijing Garden Expo
Park, in the city’s suburbs, displayed more than 10,000
installations of various sizes and designs.
Some installations were up to 60 feet (18 meters) tall and depicted
everything from cultural landmarks to traditional symbols such as
the God of Fortune, dragons and phoenixes to modern interpretations
such as a cyberpunk-style Beijing opera headdress.
___
Associated Press video producer Caroline Chen in Beijing contributed
to this report.
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