Chinese Lantern Festival lands in Spokane
Eleven days before the Chinese Lantern Festival opens to the people of Spokane, the 20 Chinese workers who are prepping Riverfront Park for the celebration of their culture were heading to another cultural event – the Spokane County Interstate Fair.
Jessie Li, the festival’s on-site manager, said she looked forward to the pig racing, but a photograph of a 3-week-old zebra at the fairgrounds didn’t seem to impress her.
When you’re used to a menagerie of fantastical lantern creatures, a baby zebra isn’t that remarkable, apparently.
The lantern festival, which opens Sept. 26, will feature 3,000 lanterns, big and small. But to call them just lanterns misses the point. Some are blue wolves with polka dots. There are trees with blossoms that look like rainbow-colored umbrellas. Lotus flowers sit as large as hot tubs. An embarrassment of pandas – the name for a group of the solitary animals – will beckon any visitor with their big heads and teeter-tottering. A doe-eyed deer has full humanlike eyelashes.
“Isn’t it cute?” Li asked of the deer. Yes, but the polka-dotted wolves were a bit frightening.
Festivalgoers can also look forward to a hand-painted, 196-foot dragon, dinosaurs, peach trees, giraffes, windmills, kangaroos, a Chinese wedding scene and many other brightly colored lanterns.
“The theme is Chinese culture,” Li said, flashing a thumbs-up.
Since early August, workers with the Sichuan Tianyu company have been wrapping the lanterns with new fabric and painting them in preparation for the five-week event. Every one of the 12,000 LED light bulbs in the lanterns have been swapped out.
Every Thursday and Friday on the festival grounds, local chef Jeremy Hansen, who owns Santé, will serve a meal inspired by one of China’s eight culinary traditions.
At the lunch hour earlier this week, Sam Song, acting director of Riverfront Park, talked to the workers in their native Sichuan dialect, answering questions and cracking jokes.
“This is the first-ever in the U.S, for North America actually, for this company,” Song said of the festival.
Song refused to take any credit for Spokane being the first stop for the company, which is headed to New Orleans next. Instead, he said it was people from the Downtown Spokane Partnership, Visit Spokane and other groups who made the plans to bring the event here beginning a year ago.
Still, Song has spent his days with the workers, who are bedecked in blue overalls, orange safety vests and yellow hard hats. This week, he watched the construction of the festival’s entryway – a bright collage of striped domes, dinosaurs and jumping fish astride an archway.
After eight men gingerly moved two tall giraffes out of the way of a small forklift, Song said they told him erecting the entryway was like building the Great Wall of China.
“My country fellows just gave me a history lesson,” Song joked.
As the crew broke for lunch, Song joined them, noting that sharing a meal was an important way to “experience the camaraderie.” It didn’t hurt that the meal was closer to Chinese home-cooking than you’ll ever find in the Inland Northwest. The meal of rice, pork, peanuts, bean sprouts and a spicy red sauce was prepared by one of the workers, a woman who makes three meals a day for the workers.
“If they didn’t have authentic Chinese cooking, they would go crazy,” Li said, smiling.
No word was given if they’ll try the fair’s deep-fried apple pie.