Chinese Lantern Festival
Franklin Square
700 Arch St.
Philadelphia
July 30, 2024
A live rat ran past my shoe while I was lacing up to walk through Philly’s Chinese Lantern Festival. Any concerns about confirmation bias were off the table. It was a symbol.
“This is the year of the sewer rat,” I thought, “so I am bound to benefit.”
Turns out that 2024 is actually the Year of the Dragon, as celebrated by a 200-foot-long paper sculpture of a fiery-red scaled serpent seen just inside the bounds of Franklin Square. That dragon is just one out of thousands of lanterns on display inside that park as part of Philly’s annual summer Chinese Lantern Festival, which brings nightly performances — like body balancing, Chinese folk dancing and fountain shows — to a stage surrounded by a campus of electric artwork.
I started my route through Franklin Square by seeking out the rat — my reference point for the Chinese Zodiac — rather than the legendarily long dragon, in order to read about all my positive traits: “Imaginatively charming… truly generous to the people you love… meant to be a writer or a critic… born in… wait… 1996?!”
I was shoved into this cold, harsh rat race of a world in 1998. Looking down the line of personified animal symbology, I learned I am actually a tiger — who the Chinese Lantern Festival says is “stubborn,” willing to “give it all to achieve your goals,” and “would be excellent as a race car driver or matador.”
While I was facing an identity crisis and reconsidering my so-called career, a pal who I’d brought along was busy being the ratty critic I had just minutes earlier considered myself to be.
The lanterns were littered with age spots, she complained, which represented a degree of filth, AKA the real reason there were rats running all around our feet. That was only a problem, she said, given the high price of admission, $25 a ticket, to a show that was “clearly” nothing more than a tourist trap, as exemplified by animal-framed faux-polaroid photo ops spread across the square.
But after buying herself a spiked lemonade — there are several booths around the park that offer alcohol and Asian eats — she was ready to relax into a good time. Spotting several lit-up lotuses, she noted her partiality towards petaled symbolism: “My mom got a tattoo of a water lily after her divorce because it symbolizes rebirth,” she told me. “So that’s cool. Plus I like that whatever music they’re playing isn’t some stupid pop song from 2014.”
To me, the lanterns were bold and genuinely beautiful. It was stimulating enough — for both my friend and myself — to simply stand in place while watching people buzz around the bright lights like insects with a hive-like sense of curiosity. The only exception to that rule were the drunken couples trying to steal the show by making out on park benches.
Looking up, there were paper flowers tangled into foliage, radiating an all-absorbing, luminescent effect…
… while friends and loved ones could be seen connecting on the earthen floor below.
Many of the lanterns are magnificent for their size alone; compare this towering structure to the tiny tot at its base.
And I was genuinely impressed by an inter-schools-DIY competition, which saw impressive drawings of dragons by local tweens and ten-year-olds turned into original, lit-up artwork made by professionals sponsored by Temple University.
At the end of the night, I watched as a little kid returned over and over again to a certain showstopper: A Cheetos-level-orange flower blowing smoking rings into the evening sky. Each time she stepped on a star button, the associated blossom would bust out a perfectly defined “O” shape.
“Let’s do it again!” the girl giggled once, then five times in a row, as her mother videoed the scene. I marveled at her good-natured stubbornness, her refusal to move on past the festival piece that had captured her attention. She was having fun, and she wanted to keep on having it. Just by observing, I was having fun too.
As more people crowded around the flower, probably intrigued by the kid’s open obsession, the mother tried to usher her daughter towards another part of the park. It was time for others to take their turn.
“No, please — it’ll be the last time!” the girl swore.
My friend, sipping her spiked citrus, shook her head: “That’s not gonna be the last time.”
That girl is stubborn enough, I thought, to be a tiger, too.
NEXT:
The Chinese Lantern Festival will be held in Franklin Square through Aug. 18 and is open from 6 to 11 p.m. daily. A map of the grounds, tickets, and performance schedules can all be found on the event’s website here.
