A festive vibe is building around China as the Lantern Festival falls on Thursday. Attending lantern shows, solving riddles, and making lanterns, people are making the most of the last days of the Spring Festival.

 

In Jiangyin city of Jiangsu Province, a local park has been decorated with one thousand lanterns. Each lantern has a riddle attached.

Solving riddles is a long-standing tradition with the Lantern Festival. In the Song Dynasty, people wrote riddles onto lanterns for visitors to guess for fun. These were later handed down as a kind of brain teaser enjoyed by people from all walks of society.

Lanterns are flying off the shelves these days. And the popular favorites this year are those modeled after the rabbit.

The Lantern Festival is also celebrated among the foreigners living in China. In Ningbo city of Zhejiang Province, local residents of an urban community were joined by some twenty foreigners to make lanterns together. They were from different countries including the U.S., Italy and Australia.