The Chinese tradition of the lantern festival goes back thousands of years and enjoys annual celebrations to this day.
The making of the lanterns hasn’t changed much, still using silk cloth and hand-painted designs – but today, LED technology and engineering savvy makes possible eye-popping lantern sculptures that can dwarf buildings.
Celebrating this cultural legacy and all the possibilities of lantern art is the traveling Winter Lantern Festival, making its Georgia debut this year at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds. The display is on view for visitors through Jan. 2.
In this interview, the festival’s operations manager, Xiao Falig, joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitz to talk more about the beautiful lanterns making their way to Atlanta.
“We would make them in China, and we would send them out by ship, and they would spend two months at sea to make it here to the U.S.,” Falig says.
