Macau, China celebrates the Lantern Festival with high hopes and rice dumplings

People release sky lanterns in hopes of good fortune and prosperity in the traditional Lantern Festival in the Pingxi district of New Taipei City, Taiwan, Wednesday

Macau marked the Lantern Festival with its final fireworks display for the Chinese New Year on Wednesday evening.

The Lantern Festival occurs on the 15th day of the first lunar month, coinciding with the first full moon night after the Chinese New Year. It is also referred to as Chinese Valentine’s Day and is one of Macau’s traditional festivals.

Meanwhile, thousands in Taiwan and China celebrated the Lantern Festival on Wednesday by releasing paper lanterns into the night sky, visiting light installations and snacking on glutinous rice dumplings.

At the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in northern Taiwan, thousands lined up in the rain to light up and observe wish lanterns. Among them were Mae Alegonero and Shine Ceralvo, friends from the Philippines who work in central Taiwan. They decided to join the event after seeing images of the floating lanterns trending on TikTok.

“You experience this once in a lifetime,” Alegonero said, as she sheltered under an umbrella with her friend and waited for the festivities to begin.

Some visitors came from as far as Europe and Latin America to witness in person the iconic images of paper lanterns filling the night sky.

Villagers in Taiwan started using paper lanterns more than a century ago to signify to others it was safe to return after bandits raided their communities. Today, the lanterns carry hopes of peace and prosperity in the New Year.

People in the mainland also celebrated the Lantern Festival, although no officially-organized event there sees the release of large amounts of paper lanterns.

Instead, Beijing residents lined up for glutinous rice dumplings — the festival’s most sought-after snack — and visited light shows across the city. The largest among them, at the Beijing Garden Expo Park, in the city’s suburbs, displayed more than 10,000 installations of various sizes and designs.

Some installations were up to 60 feet tall and depicted everything from cultural landmarks to traditional symbols such as the God of Fortune, dragons and phoenixes to modern interpretations such as a cyberpunk-style Beijing opera headdress. MDT/AP