Lantern Festival

The Chinese Lantern Festival comes on the 15th day of the Lunar New Year. This year, 2005, this fell on February 23. At Nanjing's Confucius Temple area, inside the temple compound itself was a display of several large tableaus made of bamboo framework covered with colored fabric, lighted from within. The above tableau is of Zheng He, China's famous sea explorer, who set out from Nanjing, the first capital of the Ming Dynasty, to carry China's fame into the far reaches of the ocean.

No Chinese festival is complete without a dragon. This tableau included several dragon heads surrounding a central dragon in the sea

The pagoda and the bridges in front of it were the largest of the tableaus.

This simulated gate of Confucius Temple is quite impressive, decorated with roosters, indicating this is the Year of the Rooster. Below: for the price of a few Yuan, visitors can strike this large ancient bell three times to assure good luck in the new year

The following photo shows just a few of the 500,000 people who swarmed over the large market area of shops and restaurants. It took over an hour to get to the temple itself and only by shoving and persistence did we get to the ticket table to buy tickets to get into the lantern display itself. In the larger area, human walls formed policemen and soldiers standing side by side or in locked arms kept order and created one-way lanes. There were times when you might just lift your feet and be carried along by the crowds.