Beijing sparkles with festive garb to ring in Spring Festival

BEIJING -- The Chang'an Avenue, Beijing's major thoroughfare, has been decorated with 242 red lanterns and 862 Chinese knots, to celebrate the Spring Festival, which falls on Feb. 10 this year.

"Each big red lantern on Chang'an Avenue measures 1.2 meters in diameter, 1.28 meters in height and weighs more than 10 kg. The Chinese knot is heavier, weighing more than 15 kg. It takes four people to install one lantern or a Chinese knot," said a staff member with the city's lighting management center of State Grid Beijing Electric Power Company.

Adhering to the concept of frugality and environment protection, these red lanterns, Chinese knots and string lights used last year have been reused for this year's decorations, he said.

For urban lighting support, the center will deploy 144 personnel and 32 support vehicles, focusing on folk cultural activities such as temple fairs, lantern fairs and large transportation hubs during the Spring Festival.

The landscape layout for the Spring Festival and Lantern Festival involving nearly 1,000 main streets and over 3,000 alleys has been largely set up, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Management.

"This year is the Year of the Dragon. Dragon is a prominent symbol of Chinese traditional culture. When designing these layouts, we made full use of Chinese cultural elements such as dragon culture and dragon totem," said Qu Lijian, director of the landscape division of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Management.

The city is adorned with over 250,000 lanterns and various decorations. More than 220 large-scale landscape layouts have been set up and 74 overpasses are decorated, with outdoor electronic display screens streaming greetings and video messages for the Spring Festival, Qu added.

"In terms of color, we specially chose Chinese red as the main color and used warm colors such as red, yellow and gold to create a festive atmosphere, so that locals and tourists can feel the warmth of the city," Qu said.