Chinese crew the force behind Dragon Lights
Working in subfreezing weather one morning last week, Sapphire Li hurried toward a building on the state fairgrounds with a singular thought in mind. Warmth.
“My face hurts; I can’t even smile,” said Li, a native of Dazhou, in subtropical southern China.
“For you guys, it’s cold,” she said. “For us, it’s miserably cold.”
Li, the on-site manager for Dragon Lights, is one of 27 natives of China who have spent the past two months setting up the seasonal lanterns festival, which is marking its third year in Columbus. Dragon Lights (previously called the Chinese Lantern Festival) opened Friday on the fairgrounds and run through Jan. 6.
Centuries ago, the dozens of lanterns that make up the show were constructed of paper and lit with candles. Nowadays, they are metal-and-fabric sculptures — many larger than life — with LED lights.
Most of the workers came from Zigong (like Dazhou, located in Sichuan province), the traditional center of lantern construction.
Since mid-September, crew members from the Tianyu Arts and Culture company have been welding the metal frames, wiring the lights and gluing fabric onto the frames.
Nine days before the opening, workers had many of the colorful sculptures in place. Pandas, penguins, a rhinoceros, jellyfish and a wide-mouthed shark were scattered about the Natural Resources area of the Ohio Expo Center, alongside the drained fishing pond and the Smokey Bear statue.
Some workers came to the United States in August and helped set up Dragon Lights shows elsewhere. Eleven U.S. cities will host a show in 2018.
The crew members generally work 10-hour days, seven days a week.
In their off-hours, they live in two rented houses in nearby South Linden. They use ride-sharing services to get around.
“It can be a little bit lonely,” said Xiaoli Cheng, the group’s cook who has a husband and two young sons back home. Li translated for Cheng.
Cheng said that in her free time, she goes shopping or watches Chinese news shows on her tablet or cellphone.
Shopping is a popular pastime. Li said she has made many trips to Macy’s and also Ollie’s Bargain Outlet.
“People get perfume and cosmetics, because they would be twice as expensive,” she said. “Also bags, like Michael Kors. We pursue brand names.”
Jian Yang, the crew’s supervisor, said through Li that he passes the time “playing (video) games, going shopping and playing poker.”
Amid the cold and the foreign culture, the workers find solace in one comfort of home: food.
Cheng, the chef, makes a shopping trip every four days to one of two Asian grocery stores.
Crates and boxes of produce — bitter melon, lotus root, Korean cabbage, snow peas and daikon radish, to name a few — sat on the floor of an office room being used as a kitchen:
Boxes of dried noodles and bags of rice were stacked nearby. Two chest freezers held packs of chicken and beef, as well as pigs feet and chicken feet.
Using a large wok on a propane-powered burner just outside the building, Cheng whipped up a lunch of steamed pork belly, rice, vegetables and a soup with pork and radishes.
The well-chilled workers drifted in, then sat around several tables on folding chairs and plastic stools, eating heartily.
Even the Asian meals, though, can’t quite re-create home. Yang, who along with most of the crew will return to China today, answered quickly when asked what he misses most from home.
“Hotpot,” he said. “Every time I go back, I get hotpot for my first meal.”