Comments on: Auckland Lantern Festival

By: Peg Moore

Peg Moore — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 06:54:06 +0000

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

By: Kriz

Kriz — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 16:11:21 +0000

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.

By: Clara

Clara — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 11:46:33 +0000

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.

By: josh

josh — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 06:30:25 +0000

Here is a picture of the giraffe lantern:

By the way, these photos were taken with something like a 10 second exposure time.

By: josh

josh — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 06:28:43 +0000

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.

By: Clara

Clara — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 02:08:34 +0000

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.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 23:54:31 +0000

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.