Residents of Xuzhai village in Dongyang craft lanterns to celebrate the Lantern Festival. [Photo/Tide News]
Residents of Xuzhai village in Dongyang, a county-level city in Jinhua, Zhejiang province, are gearing up to create a diverse array of lanterns to celebrate the upcoming Lantern Festival.
With a historical lineage tracing back to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the village has long been renowned for its lantern-making tradition. Dongyang lanterns are distinguished by their needle-pierced designs, allowing light to illuminate the intricate patterns created by embroidery needles.
Furthermore, they are frameless, with their three-dimensional form meticulously crafted through the balanced force of pasted paper.
The lanterns showcase a distinctive design, integrating wood carving, bamboo weaving, needlework, and tailoring crafts, serving as a vibrant representation of traditional agricultural production and rural life, depicting scenes such as rice seedlings, bustling waterways, rice pounding. They have been dubbed "a mobile museum of traditional agricultural culture".
Locals meticulously fashion the pierced lanterns on long benches before parading them during festivities, offering prayers for favorable weather and a bountiful harvest.
