Red lanterns
Red lanterns hung at doors and over streets for the Lunar New Year. The season ends on the 15th day of the first month with the Lantern Festival (Yuanxiao), the first full moon of the year, when lanterns are lit, carried and admired.
Meaning
Lanterns, deng (灯), are lit through the Chinese New Year and above all on its last night. Lantern making (灯彩, dengcai) is on China’s national register of intangible heritage, which calls hanging lanterns and festoons the main custom of the Lantern Festival and says lanterns became a sign of good fortune, hung for weddings, birthdays and other celebrations as well. In Beijing, the register notes, only two kinds of lantern were still being made after the 1950s: the palace lantern (宫灯) and the red gauze lantern (红纱灯). Red, the historian Ming Gao writes, is the colour of good fortune and joy in China, and red decorations go up for the New Year. The lanterns’ own night is the Lantern Festival, Yuanxiao jie (元宵节), on the 15th of the first month, the first full moon of the year, which ends the New Year season. In 2027 it falls on 20 February, by the Hong Kong Observatory’s calendar. It is kept in mainland China and Taiwan and among Chinese communities abroad, the register says; in Singapore the 15th night is Chap Goh Meh.
Origin and history
China’s register says lanterns have been lit at Yuanxiao since the Han dynasty, and that the custom grew from there. Under the Tang it flourished: the line “fiery trees and silver flowers join, the star bridge’s iron locks open” describes the festival night in Chang’an. Under the Ming people looked at the lanterns for ten days on end, and under the Qing fireworks and firecrackers went off among them. The festival has many names besides Yuanxiao: Shangyuan, Yuanxi, and the Lantern Festival, Dengjie. In Zigong, in Sichuan, whose lantern fair is itself on the national register, lamps were already lit at the New Year under the Tang and Song.
In Beijing in 1900, Fucha Dunchong recorded in his Yanjing suishi ji, the lantern festival ran from the 13th to the 17th of the first month, with the 15th as the “proper lantern” day. The palace held banquets and set off fireworks, the shops hung out lanterns, and the brightest streets were at Dongsi Pailou and Di’anmen. The lanterns were of gauze, silk, glass and horn, painted with stories old and new, and skilled hands made some of ice. The night’s great food was yuanxiao, the sweet dumplings that share the festival’s name.
Why lanterns? Originally, Columbia University’s Asia for Educators notes, they were said to have been used on this night to see the gods by torchlight, and each family built an elaborate paper lantern for the purpose.
Riddles, dumplings and a walk
China’s register lists the Lantern Festival’s customs. One is guessing riddles hung on lanterns, which first appears in the Song dynasty, with a prize for the right answer; Columbia’s Asia for Educators adds that a drum was traditionally sounded when a riddle was solved. Another is eating yuanxiao, also called tangyuan, round balls of glutinous rice flour, usually filled, whose roundness stands for the family together. In some places people go out walking in company on the festival day, crossing bridges or heading into the countryside, a custom called “walking off the hundred illnesses” that stands for driving away sickness and disaster. Dragon and lion dances, stilt-walking and land-boat dances have joined the festival in modern times.
Lanterns for new sons in Hong Kong
In the villages of Hong Kong’s New Territories, lighting lanterns in the first month marks a birth. Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritage inventory lists lantern lighting rituals held every first lunar month at the ancestral halls, shrines, gatehouses and earth-god shrines of village after village, to celebrate the birth of baby boys. At Shek Kwu Lung village in Sha Tin the Hui clan holds the ritual on the 14th and 15th days of the month: families with newborn boys light lanterns while the women of the clan make steamed sticky rice dumplings. The city’s Lunar New Year Lantern Carnival of 2018 joined two heritage crafts, with lanterns made by a master paper craftsman in the shape of dancing lions.
Lanterns at other festivals
The Lantern Festival is not the only lantern night. Some places hold their lantern fairs on the 15th of the seventh month instead, China’s register notes, and in Beijing in 1900 lanterns were set floating on the canal on the evening of the Zhongyuan festival in the seventh month, Fucha Dunchong records. India’s Diwali has hanging lanterns of its own, such as the akash kandil, from a different calendar and tradition.
Read next
- Next in Lunar New Year symbolsFirecrackersStrings of small paper firecrackers set off to see out the old year and greet the new. Their bangs were meant to frighten off evil spirits and, in a legend first written down in modern times, the monster Nian. Many cities now restrict them.
- Hanging festival lanterns from another calendar and traditionAkash deep (Diwali lantern)A lantern hung high outside the house through the Diwali season. Akash kandil is its Marathi name; the older Sanskrit word, ākāśadīpa, is a lamp raised on a pole at Diwali in honour of Lakshmi or Vishnu.
See also
Lion dance, Red envelope (hongbao), Upside-down fu (福).
Sources
- 元宵节 (中国非物质文化遗产网), 国家级非物质文化遗产代表性项目名录, 项目编号 Ⅹ-71, 2008 (第二批), China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, Chinese National Academy of Arts, project page
- 灯彩（北京灯彩） (中国非物质文化遗产网), 国家级非物质文化遗产代表性项目名录, 项目编号 Ⅶ-50, 2008 (第二批), China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, Chinese National Academy of Arts, project page
- 灯会（自贡灯会） (中国非物质文化遗产网), 国家级非物质文化遗产代表性项目名录, 项目编号 Ⅹ-81, 2008 (第二批), China Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, Chinese National Academy of Arts, project page
- 燕京歲時記 (富察敦崇, 1900), 富察敦崇 (Fucha Dunchong), 燕京歲時記 (Yanjing suishi ji), 1900, Wikisource transcription, Wikisource
- The Lunar New Year: Rituals and Legends (Asia for Educators, Columbia University), Asia for Educators, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University, Columbia University, sections “Preparations for the New Year”, “New Year’s Eve”, “New Year Festivities”, “The Lantern Festival”
- Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2027 (Hong Kong Observatory), Hong Kong Observatory, Gregorian-Lunar Calendar Conversion Table of 2027 (Ding-wei, year of the Goat), Hong Kong Observatory, title and entries for 6 and 20 February 2027
- What is the story of hongbao, the red envelopes given out at celebrations like Lunar New Year? (Ming Gao, The Conversation), Ming Gao (Australian Catholic University), The Conversation, 27 January 2025, The Conversation, article text
- Celebrating Lunar New Year with the Library of Congress’s Collections, Dianne Choie, Minerva’s Kaleidoscope (Library of Congress blog), February 2024, Library of Congress, blog post
- Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory of Hong Kong (2024), Intangible Cultural Heritage Office, Intangible Cultural Heritage Inventory of Hong Kong, 2024 edition, Intangible Cultural Heritage Office, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, HKSAR, items 2.1–2.4, 3.5, 3.5.18, 3.60
- Hong Kong Intangible Cultural Heritage: past exhibitions (Intangible Cultural Heritage Office), Intangible Cultural Heritage Office, past exhibitions page, Intangible Cultural Heritage Office, Leisure and Cultural Services Department, HKSAR, Lunar New Year Lantern Carnival 2018
- Firecrackers (Bianpao) (Culturepaedia, Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre), Gan Zhen Yin (Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall), “Firecrackers (Bianpao)”, Culturepaedia, last updated 11 December 2025, Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre, article text
- Chinese New Year (Encyclopaedia Britannica), Tamanna Nangia and the Editors, “Chinese New Year”, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica, article text
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 8, 2026. How we research
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