Last weekend Auckland held its annual Lantern Festival in Albert Park, celebrating Chinese New Year and culture. Albert Park (the park across the street from our apartment) was lit up with all kinds of lanterns in the shapes of animals, trees, traditional lanterns, and really anything you could stick a candle in. The Lantern Festival is one of Auckland’s largest festivals each year, partly because of the huge Asian population in Auckland city, coming here from Asia to study, work, and live.
During the day there were cultural performances, including dance, martial arts, music, and an Asian favorite, Karaoke all night long. The street was packed with street vendors selling various degrees of junk, and lots of Asian cuisine. I ate Asian food exclusively for the entire weekend.
I really enjoyed the photo and your description of Soundsplash. It sounds like something your mother would LOVE! I don’t quite understand the “dub” music, but perhaps that’s OK. I do know what “reggae” is.
This Lantern Festival in honor of the Chinese New Year is great. The lanterns in the photo are so neat. Before I looked at the photo closely, I thought those were large Easter eggs. Not! They seem to be on platforms. How tall would one of the lanterns, for instance the yellow butterfly one in the front right, be? And what lights them from inside? The decorations are neat–and so must be the activities you described. Asian food all weekend!!!!! And what fun that the festival was across the street from your apartment.
Glad you liked the photos of the lantern. Those pot/vase looking lanterns are probably about 4 feet high including the stand they are on. The lion was maybe more like 8 feet. They had all different kinds of lanterns, there was one like a giraffe that was maybe 12 feet tall, and also lots of little ones.
I guess the light was just a small light like you might find on a Christmas tree, or probably something bigger for the larger ones.
These are so cool! I see that there are probably several smaller lights inside each lantern. The Auckland people must work on these in the same way American people work on the floats for the Rose Parade (flowers) or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade (balloons). Thanks for posting these and for responding to my comments and questions.
My bad for not writing much lately! I’ve been reading and loving all the posts and pictures, including the gallery of Great Barrier pics. And what a bod in the surf board photo! All that activity shows on you! I’ve been working a lot at the Canton house, so I haven’t been online as much for a few days, but keep the posts coming. Love them! Mmmmmm, all that awesome music and Asian food! Like when Dad and I had seafood every day we were in Maine. Smart! XOXOX
7 Comments »
Comment by josh — March 13, 2007 @ 12:54 pm
Last weekend Auckland held its annual Lantern Festival in Albert Park, celebrating Chinese New Year and culture. Albert Park (the park across the street from our apartment) was lit up with all kinds of lanterns in the shapes of animals, trees, traditional lanterns, and really anything you could stick a candle in. The Lantern Festival is one of Auckland’s largest festivals each year, partly because of the huge Asian population in Auckland city, coming here from Asia to study, work, and live.
During the day there were cultural performances, including dance, martial arts, music, and an Asian favorite, Karaoke all night long. The street was packed with street vendors selling various degrees of junk, and lots of Asian cuisine. I ate Asian food exclusively for the entire weekend.
Comment by Clara — March 14, 2007 @ 3:08 pm
I really enjoyed the photo and your description of Soundsplash. It sounds like something your mother would LOVE! I don’t quite understand the “dub” music, but perhaps that’s OK. I do know what “reggae” is.
This Lantern Festival in honor of the Chinese New Year is great. The lanterns in the photo are so neat. Before I looked at the photo closely, I thought those were large Easter eggs. Not! They seem to be on platforms. How tall would one of the lanterns, for instance the yellow butterfly one in the front right, be? And what lights them from inside? The decorations are neat–and so must be the activities you described. Asian food all weekend!!!!! And what fun that the festival was across the street from your apartment.
Comment by josh — March 14, 2007 @ 7:28 pm
Glad you liked the photos of the lantern. Those pot/vase looking lanterns are probably about 4 feet high including the stand they are on. The lion was maybe more like 8 feet. They had all different kinds of lanterns, there was one like a giraffe that was maybe 12 feet tall, and also lots of little ones.
I guess the light was just a small light like you might find on a Christmas tree, or probably something bigger for the larger ones.
Comment by josh — March 14, 2007 @ 7:30 pm
Here is a picture of the giraffe lantern:
By the way, these photos were taken with something like a 10 second exposure time.
Comment by Clara — March 15, 2007 @ 12:46 am
These are so cool! I see that there are probably several smaller lights inside each lantern. The Auckland people must work on these in the same way American people work on the floats for the Rose Parade (flowers) or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade (balloons). Thanks for posting these and for responding to my comments and questions.
Comment by Kriz — March 15, 2007 @ 5:11 am
Those are great pictures Josh, and it sounds like a fun festival. Asian food is goooood, and I bet it gets better the closer you get to Asia.
Comment by Peg Moore — March 15, 2007 @ 7:54 pm
My bad for not writing much lately! I’ve been reading and loving all the posts and pictures, including the gallery of Great Barrier pics. And what a bod in the surf board photo!
All that activity shows on you! 
I’ve been working a lot at the Canton house, so I haven’t been online as much for a few days, but keep the posts coming. Love them! Mmmmmm, all that awesome music and Asian food! Like when Dad and I had seafood every day we were in Maine. Smart! 
XOXOX
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