Chinese Lantern Festivals

Tianyu Arts & Culture is the North American arm of Sichuan Tianyu, headquartered in Zigong — the city in Sichuan where lantern making has been handed down for generations. Every set is built there by hand: steel frames welded to shape, wrapped in silk, hand painted, then containerised, shipped and reassembled on site.

A lantern festival is a walking route, and a walking route needs places to stop. That is our half of the evening. We stage live performances at the rest points along the trail — hoop diving, hand balancing, Sichuan face-changing and Chinese variety numbers — in a run order timed to the flow of visitors rather than to a theatre curtain.

Sites are zoos, botanical gardens, amusement parks and fairgrounds, and a run is typically 60 to 100 nights across the autumn and winter. Tianyu delivers the installation, the maintenance crew and the strike; we deliver the cast, the costumes, the music and the nightly schedule.

For parks and gardens the appeal is the same either way: a night-time attraction that extends operating hours and reopens the gate for a second admission.