Love is in the air for city's Chinese lantern festival

This special lantern has been shipped in from Shanghai. Photo / Sarah Ivey

For Malaysian Estelle Goh and her Hong Kong boyfriend Tim Chan, this weekend will be when they celebrate Valentine's Day.

And like Estelle and Tim, many other ethnic Chinese will also be seizing on the lantern festival, also known as Chinese Valentine's Day, for an opportunity to get a second shot at celebrating the day of love and romance after February 14 coincided with the first day of Chinese New Year.

"We had to fulfil our family tradition and obligations by attending our respective family functions, and couldn't be together on Valentine's Day," said Miss Goh, 19, who has been dating Mr Chan for six months.

"The lantern festival, or Chinese Valentine's Day, gives us the perfect second chance for us to celebrate our love."

Auckland's lantern festival, which is into its 11th year, starts this evening at Albert Park and runs until Sunday.

Coinciding with the 15th day of the first month of the lunar calender, which falls on Sunday, it also marks the closing of Chinese New Year festivities.

In Miss Goh's native Malaysia, single women used to parade with lanterns and throw mandarins into rivers or the sea, believing it would bring them luck in finding a husband.

Lantern festivals, known as yuan xiao jie, have been celebrated by the Chinese since the Han Dynasty in 206BC, and Auckland is one of the few places outside Asia to have a public celebration.

Organisers Asia New Zealand Foundation said it was expecting record crowds after more than 150,000 people attended last year.

The foundation pointed out that this is the Chinese Year of the Tiger.

"The tiger is a sign of courage, revered in the old days as the sign that wards off the three main disasters of a household - fire, thieves and ghosts."

Some lanterns had been shipped to Auckland from Shanghai, including a tiger lantern to mark the year.

The festival will also feature performances by local and Chinese troupes, including one of Shanghai's top music ensembles, Moon, Beijing's Mongolian folk rock group Hanggai and rolling lantern folk dancers from Southern China.

Auckland University professor of Asian studies Manying Ip says the local festival has played a "pivotal role" in promoting an important aspect of Chinese culture to mainstream New Zealanders.

LANTERN FESTIVAL

Where: Albert Park, central Auckland.

When: Today until Sunday night.

What: Lantern displays, live performances, food fair, ethnic stalls, firecrackers and fireworks. Free.