Splendid China launches lantern festival and new projects

The Splendid China • China Folk Culture Villages theme park launched its 2026 Spring Festival Lantern Festival and two new cultural projects on Dec. 5, offering upgraded and immersive tourism experiences.

As one of Shenzhen’s major annual cultural and tourism events, this year’s lantern festival centers on the theme “Heritage Reborn.” Spanning 530,000 square meters, the festival features more than 40 largescale lantern installations inspired by intangible cultural heritage (ICH) — from traditional auspicious motifs and multi-ethnic elements to Lingnan patterns and new-media light-and-shadow interactions — reinterpreting the visual language of the Chinese New Year in familiar yet refreshed settings.

A view of the centerpiece lantern “Ao Fish Soaring to the Sky.”Photos courtesy of Splendid China

The centerpiece lantern, “Ao Fish Soaring to the Sky,” with a dragon head and fish body, debuted spectacularly, symbolizing auspiciousness taking flight. The “Bay Area ICH” installation blends Lingnan crafts with landmark cityscapes in light and shadow, illustrating an era of cultural fusion. For the first time, the festival also introduced a Palace Museum IP installation, “China in Light,” which integrates the Palace Museum’s lantern traditions with ICH lantern craftsmanship. The scale and cultural depth of this 530,000-square-meter light-and-shadow experience set a new standard for an ICH lantern festival that balances artistic ambition with broad public appeal.

A view of the “Bay Area ICH” installation.

Two new immersive cultural projects were unveiled to reshape on-site ICH experiences. The fully upgraded Cuihu (Emerald Lake) waterfront show uses the water as a stage, combining a 100-meter bamboo raft dragon, ethnic song and dance, steel-flower displays, and digital lighting to create a day-and-night narrative. Daytime performances such as Quest for the Dragon invite visitors to move through walkable routes that encourage lingering and photography; evening programming is headlined by the steel-flower spectacle, a three-act epic that pairs Nuo masks, the Dong people’s polyphonic songs, steel-flower performances, and cutting-edge audiovisual technology to deliver a powerful multi-sensory experience.

The other new project, Impression China: Peking Opera Immersive District, places nationally recognized Peking Opera at its core. Through digital interaction, costume try-on, role-guided experiences, opera-themed cultural products, and immersive photo opportunities, the district presents Peking Opera’s performance forms, color symbolism, and narratives in more accessible yet deeper ways — making the art form tangible, learnable, and playful, and helping it gain renewed social traction among younger audiences.

To create a truly immersive Chinese New Year, the park will stage more than 100 ICH performances from the Spring Festival through the Lantern Festival, offering Shenzhen a rich, high-density cultural program. Over 20 national-level ICH performances will rotate during the New Year period, including lion and dragon dances, fish-lantern dances, Yingge dance, single-bamboo rafting, and the Chaoshan cloth-horse dance. The park will also introduce robots and robotic dogs into parades and interactive shows, combining ICH with technology to create trendier performances that appeal to younger visitors.