Salt and dinosaurs are written into the rock; the lanterns are written across the night sky. Every Spring Festival, Zigong (自贡) lights whole gardens into a cathedral of colour — glowing dragons the length of a city block, sets several storeys high, dinosaurs drifting above the crowds. This is the Zigong International Dinosaur Lantern Festival (自贡国际恐龙灯会), and it is why the city is known as the “city of lanterns (灯城).”
The modern festival began with a government-organised Spring Festival fair in 1964, which drew some 200,000 visitors; in 1987 it was renamed the International Dinosaur Lantern Festival (国际恐龙灯会), fusing the city’s two emblems and beginning to travel abroad. In 1994 it was named the “home of Chinese lantern festivals (中国彩灯之乡).” Today Zigong’s lanterns have been shown in hundreds of cities and dozens of countries — an export business that fuses traditional artistry with steel framing, motors, LED, and logistics to ship room-sized illuminated sets across the world.
What truly sets Zigong’s lanterns apart is the craft. Artisans bend bamboo and wire into armatures, then skin them in silk, paper, and glass; the signature move is to bind everyday objects — porcelain bowls and dishes, medicine bottles — into glowing mosaics. The subjects, too, are often local: the salt worker at his brine, and Zhang Daqian (张大千), the painter Zigong gave the world, are both rendered in light.
So a New Year folk custom, born in a city of salt merchants, grew into an industry shipped around the globe. That it is the Dinosaur Lantern Festival is no accident: salt, dinosaurs, and lanterns are the three ways this city tells its own story — and the lanterns are the one that glows, and the one that gets crated and carried away.
A walk through the 2017 festival
The photographs below are from the 23rd Zigong International Dinosaur Lantern Festival (Colored Lantern Park / 彩灯公园, 2017); the last is a riverside scene in the city, the same winter.
