Pronounced: kǒngmíng dēng / xǔyuàn dēng
Literally: Kong Ming lantern / make-a-wish lantern
Means: sky lantern, the candle-powered floating lanterns released into the sky during the Lantern Festival.
Last night was The Lantern Festival 元宵节, the final night of Spring Festival 春节 and that means the last night of fireworks(!), so this morning it’s finally all quiet on the eastern front.
We joined the happy crowds last night on Tianjin’s frozen Haihe river 海河 near Ancient Culture Street 古文化街 and launched a couple “wish lanterns” 许愿灯 (usually called 孔明灯) — the candle-powered sky lanterns you’ve probably seen pictures of.
These pictures aren’t great, but it was actually a pretty fun scene. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lanterns were floating around, fireworks up and down the river, lots of people having fun, etc.
Ok, the pictures really aren’t that great, but all those little dots in the sky are lanterns. It looked cool, I promise. Just look at the photos and use your imagination.
You can actually see it better in the video clip below.
Some of the flaming lanterns got stuck in trees, and every so often one would come hurtling down to the ice in a blazing arc of glory. We even launched a couple:
These were the only lanterns to be found at Tianjin’s Ancient Culture Street 古文化街，which was a bit of a disappointment considering it was the LANTERN Festival, but it was still fun to launch fire hazards into the night sky from down on the river. We’ll definitely do this again next time we get the chance!
You can browse the rest of our Spring Festival fun here.
Tonight is 元宵节 (yuán xiāo jié, a.k.a. the Lantern Festival), the last big fireworks night of Spring Festival. This is our living room (4th floor) around 9pm — you can imagine the noise.
We partied it up too hard during all the other days of Spring Festival (photo galleries will be up soon!), so tonight we’re staying in nursing Lilia’s and Jessica’s colds. By this time (15 days into Spring Festival) the fireworks have long since changed from fun to annoying. We’ll be glad for the relative peace and quiet after the fireworks season is over.
Other fireworks posts:
