How do you celebrate nature, art, and culture at the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden? How about lighting up over 60 larger-than-life Chinese lanterns at the facility's first ever Moonlight Forest Festival.
Attendance is up at the L.A. County Arboretum and Botanic Garden but how do you stay relevant in a city obsessed with taking selfies. To attract millennials patronized by the future, the Arboretum drew inspiration from the past. A Chinese lantern festival, which dates back 2000 years.
These aren’t ordinary lanterns. Hand-crafted and hand-painted, they were first designed by hand on paper and then welded together by craftsmen.
Larger than life, the lanterns are remarkable during the day, but they’re spectacular at night all lit up. You could say ‘selfie-worthy.’ And when you see a 60 foot glowing dragon in the middle of Baldwin Lake, you’re reminded this is a cultural tradition and not a passing trend.
The dragon is a very good thing in China. The dragon means hope and it will bring a lot of good things for people.
A dragon that brings hope. Where’s that TV Show?
The festival takes up to two months to build. All of our materials are sent in from China, but they are specially built right here at the Arboretum.
It’s a collaboration long in the making. Something the Arboretum hopes to bring back.
The idea behind this festival was to bring a lot of people to the Arboretum for the first time, to discover this place and also to celebrate one of the great traditions of the Chinese culture, which is such an important part of the San Gabriel Valley.