It’s back bigger, brighter and bolder
More crafts, food, entertainment at returning festival
Shirley Walczak and Ralph Garrity sound like carnival barkers of a century ago, talking over each other as they describe their attraction: “brighter,” “95% new,” “dazzling,” “enchanting,” “expanded” and “bigger.”
Their subject is the China Lights festival, which returns to Boerner Botanical Gardens in Whitnall Park beginning Friday and running through Oct. 22. Walczak is the director of Boerner; Garrity is the promoter of the festival. And what they’re promising is more lights, more traditional crafts, more food vendors and more entertainment.
Last year’s festival — the first ever staged in the Midwest — was a smash hit, catching organizers by surprise and ultimately drawing 100,000 patrons. Word of mouth and repeat visitors seemed to push attendance as the show’s run progressed, and organizers added an extra week. Still, on many nights, lines of people waiting to get in snaked around the parking lot; several nights, some were turned away because the grounds were too jammed.
“Everyone who didn’t come last year wants to come this year,” Walczak said.
More than two dozen artisans from Zigong City in the Chinese province of Sichuan arrived in Milwaukee in August to begin assembling the fabric-covered lanterns that make up the sculptures, said Huiyuan Liu, event manager for Sichuan Tianyu Culture Communication Co. in Zigong.
Festival-goers this year will be welcomed outside the Boerner visitor center by a cluster of eight spires made of tens of thousands of porcelain bowls, cups, plates and spoons, all tied together by Chinese artisans. In the middle, is a 40-foottall tower.
Once inside, the festival features a series of 46 displays of lantern sculptures illuminating 10 acres along three-quarters of a mile of garden paths.
“The sculptures make the gardens come alive at night,” Walczak said on a recent tour.
Only the two most popular displays from last year — a 200-foot-long undulated dragon and the mythical Kylin — are returning to the gardens for the 2017 festival.
Kylin is a fantasy beast comprised of the body of a deer, tail of an ox, feet of a horse and scales of a fish. The metal frame bodies of these creatures are covered with hundreds of tiny bottles filled with colored water.
The dragon stopped festival-goers in their tracks a year ago as many of them took photos or video of the gigantic, colorful monster. It likely will be a bottleneck again this year now that the artisans have assembled an equally enormous phoenix next to it. A phoenix generally accompanies a dragon in decorations and costume for weddings in China, Liu said. The phoenix symbolizes a queen while the dragon symbolizes an emperor.
Children attending the 2017 show can help light the “polychrome elephant” lantern by hopping on a bicycle and spinning the wheels to brighten the display. Boerner employees call this one “pedal the pachyderm.”
Other new sculptures include 15-foot-tall swans and dinosaurs that change colors, as well as “prosperous fish.” A 10foot-tall fabric wall is covered with panda lanterns along its 50-foot length.
The 2017 festival schedule will include a 6:15 p.m. daily “Illumination Parade” past lantern sculptures in the shrub mall. The procession will end at the main cultural entertainment stage, the Dragon Stage, for the 6:30 p.m. start of nightly shows.
China Lights this year is offering two stages for Chinese folk-culture performances, including acrobats, martial arts, and musicians. Folk music will be played on a traditional two-stringed violin, known as the erhu.
There will be demonstrations of the ancient Chinese art of mask changing in Sichuan opera. Performers wear thin masks that change with the passing of a fan.
Each night’s entertainment schedule will be posted at the Welcome Gate.
The festival mall is offering a marketplace with artisans selling handicrafts, clothing, toys, jewelry and art. Among the crafts to be demonstrated are rice engraving, aluminum wire weaving, and painting the insides of small bottles with a bent brush.
China Lights also features two dining areas with local food vendors selling both Asian and Western options — from Kowloon chicken to hot dogs — as well as beverages.
Lantern festivals have been held in China for more than 400 years.
In 2015, the Sichuan provincial government set a goal of holding 100 lantern festivals in 100 cities worldwide within five years to promote Chinese culture.
There is no shortage of skilled workers to accomplish the task: Zigong City in Sichuan is home to 380 lantern-making companies employing 80,000 people.
Sichuan Tianyu is one of those companies, and its artisans have created more than 30 festivals outside of China, including 15 in the United States since 2015, Liu said.