For the past 4 years, including this one, winters in Edinburgh have brought some fantastic Giant Lanterns of China events to Edinburgh Zoo! Each year has had a different theming, although this years event is Christmas Lights themed rather than using lanterns – it was still a super fun event and I think could be something combined using both light effects and lanterns for events in the future. Edinburgh Zoo was one of the first zoos to have a lantern event, particularly in the UK, and these are definitely becoming very popular events now to brighten up the cold winter nights! Some of the Giant Lantern events have even won Giant Panda Global Awards too, which is a fun accolade for the events^ This post is photo-heavy, so I will write a little about each of the annual events then leave you to enjoy the pictures of some of the fantastic lantern and light displays that I’ve enjoyed over the years =)
2017 – Giant Lanterns of China
2017 brought the first Giant Lanterns of China event and celebrated Chinese culture with some well-known symbols, with lots of red, beautiful lanterns, dragons and a huge centrepiece of a Beijing Temple of Heaven. These were mixed in with Scottish symbols and amazing lanterns of wildlife from all over the world with a focus on Scottish and Chinese animals including beavers and of course a whole paddock of pandas (a real highlight for a panda-loving person)! This year there were also regular nightly performances with some fantastic Chinese performers – I didn’t get any pictures, however if you ever get to see a face-changing performer, they’re really entertaining! There was also a small marketplace with a range of Chinese-crafted goods to buy and also Chinese food.
2018 – Giant Lanterns of China: Myths and Legends
In 2018 the Lanterns returned with a very creative new theme which I really found brought something new and unique to the event – mixing in traditional legends from China and Scotland. I found this very interesting and made it a different event from the previous year, it was also fun to learn a new aspect of Chinese culture so I really appreciated that opportunity. I really love looking back to these photos, the colours of the lantern displays are just so vibrant and eye-catching and the details are really stunning – I’d quite happily view this display of stories again! There were of course also some animal lanterns on display, with polar bears (including a cub, representing Victoria and Hamish which was very cute), giraffes, big cats and of course a panda. The lanterns display stared with the opening of a storybook, releasing the mythical stories, and ending with the closing of the book with some now-extinct species including a mammoth and dodo walking back into the book as these are now regarded as myths and hopefully spreading a message of conservation.
2019 – Giant Lanterns: Lost Worlds
The theme of conservation was continued from 2018 into the 2019 lanterns. These new lanterns were themed on the Lost World with a dinosaur focus – I’m a big Jurassic Park fan, so this was fine by me, but I really missed having the presence of pandas in the lantern displays. The theming was pretty good this year too, and I liked all of the educational signs telling me more about all of these types of dinosaurs that weren’t featured in the movies^ The trail of lanterns started with turning back the clock to when dinosaurs were around, and towards the end of the lantern displays current at-risk animals were on display and a slowed-clock highlighted that the extinction rate can potentially be slowed with increasing conservation efforts. I do think that that story could have been highlighted more, but I at least liked the message. I also liked the highlighting of animals on the final clock lantern – these are some of the species that Edinburgh Zoo is focussing on in their ‘Big 5’ which was introduced at the AGM in 2019 and is the 5 year conservation plan that the zoo has. This starts with giraffes soon returning to the zoo, and future efforts towards sun bears, rhinos, tropical species and penguins – and each area focuses on a different conservation problem, including habitat loss, wildlife exploitation and climate change to name a few. This definitely wasn’t highlighted enough at the event so if you want to read more you can check out some of the details *here on the Edinburgh Zoo website*.
2020 – Christmas Nights
As with everything in 2020, this years event looks a little different, but is none the less any special as the previous winter events at the zoo – the theme is Christmas Nights with beautiful light displays in a trail around the zoo. It was still super pretty and just as good as the previous lanterns events – I think a combination of some of the lighting effects with lanterns would also make a fun event in the future. All of the lights were super pretty and there were quite a few light installations designed for queueing and taking pictures with. Highlights for us included the projection show which was in the enclosure with the rock face behind the sun bears – this lasted a couple of minutes with mats laid out for socially distanced viewing, and also the ‘Arctic Walk’ which had huge screens on either side of a bridge with beautiful arctic scenes playing across them. This is something that you really need to stand to view, staff were good at letting people stand for a bit, but moving everyone on when the area was getting a little busy. We went on an adults-only evening during the first entry time and we were happy with the level of people there, there are capacity limits for each night/entry time slot, I can imagine it gets a little busy later in the evenings.
