China Festival of Lights : Thoughts and Photos

It’s been two weeks since I visited the China Festival of Lights lantern exhibition at Dierenpark Emmen, so I thought it was about time that I shared some photos and my thoughts of this wonderful evening out. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to visit it but would like to, the exhibition will be running until February 7, 2010, so you only have one more week to stop by and admire the beautiful Chinese lanterns on display.

If I could choose one word to sum up the festival, it would be “spectacular”. Sander and I have attended many Chinese and Japanese events around the Netherlands and have always been a little disappointed. The Moon Festival held in Den Haag last October was a particularly disappointing affair so I didn’t harbour any illusions that the lantern festival would be any better. And how wrong I was! Even the walk along the pedestrian crossing and shopping centre was thoroughly enjoyable. Small lanterns graced the walkway while tigers prowled the streets and penguins looked right at home as they frolicked in the snow.**

At the entrance to the zoo, we were greeted by a beautifully-decorated ornamental gate (the text on the gate can be loosely translated as “The best lantern (or lanterns) under the sky” or “The best lanterns in the world”). We showed our tickets to the friendly, shivering attendants and made our way into this veritable wonderland of lanterns.

Playful pandas to the left of us, an elephant arch to the right, and a lost valley of dinosaurs all contended for our attention. I was amazed at the quality and beauty of the lanterns. I’ve visited lantern festivals in China and Taiwan and I honestly didn’t expect to see anything quite as fantastic as I had in Asia. We made our way past flamboyant flamingos, bugs of all shapes and sizes, snarling tigers, and a cheeky monkey sitting amidst an orchard of trees bearing immortal peaches.

We soon came across one of the main attractions, a 100-metre long dragon lantern which blew out puffs of smoke at regular intervals. At this point, we decided to grab some Chinese tea and coffee to warm the cockles. Of course, we had chosen a particularly cold night to attend the festival but we didn’t let the cold and subsequent snow storm deter us.

We plowed on and came across cranes, lions, a couple of adorable phoenixes and even a cute baby crocodile nestled away in its egg. We even saw a few playful sea lions (real ones!) swimming back and forth in their pool and performing somersaults for the amusement of the festival-goers.**

We decided to grab a quick bite before continuing so we stopped at a small stall which sold a variety of Asian treats, including kroepoek (prawn crackers) and a selection of rice sandwiches. The rice sandwiches were literally slices of compressed rice. Sander had his with a serving of teriyaki chicken, while I settled for one with tempura prawns and wasabi mayonnaise.

After eating these tasty morsels, we began our trek through the final section of the zoo. We past some spectacular archways reminiscent of Japanese torii gates and stumbled upon a group of kids riding on the back of a somewhat disgruntled ox. I suppose I’d be disgruntled too if I had a cheeky little so-and-so tugging on my tail!

We left the cheeky little chaps behind and slipped and slided our way past an Indonesian-style temple and some extravagant elephants before making our way past a pair of loved-up swans and a beautiful blue vase which was decorated by pandas. The “vase” was made of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tiny LCD cells and was sponsored by the WWF, known here in the Netherlands as the Wereld Natuur Fonds.

The final display was a lively display of acrobatic dogs (at least I think there were dogs) spinning around on balls to bid the festival-goers farewell.

After a quick stop at the souvenir shop, we made our way back to the car (which was parked a good 15-minute walk away) and began to drive home. The drive home was a hair-raising one. Emmen is a good 2-hour drive away from Almere and a blizzard hit us only 20 minutes into our journey, so it took us almost 3 hours to get home. And just as we were about to turn off the roundabout which leads into our street, the car skidded off the road and narrowly missed hitting a lamppost. Whoops! Thankfully, both us and the car survived the ordeal uninjured. Black ice is a force that just can’t be reckoned with. :p

The full gallery of photos taken at the festival can be found here.

** Fear not, dear readers. The animals were merely carved out of wood, so no harm came to us or our fellow festival-goers.
** I would like to point out that most of the animals had been moved to their winter enclosures, so the sea lions were the only live animals we came across during our trek through the zoo.