Chinese Lantern Festival ends tonight in Philadelphia, PA - very cool cultural experience, art and talent to see

Located at historic Franklin Square in Philadelphia, which is at 6th and Race Streets in Philadelphia, PA, there has been a site to see that ends tonight.

They have a beautiful display of these lanterns made by those in the Chinatown community in Philadelphia, and visitors from all over the country also come to display their works.

There are performers doing shows every few hours, all sorts of foods to eat. There were lots of drinks to try that were asian style.


There was a focus on pandas in particular this year and affiliation with a restaurant of the similar name and a loose theme but there wasn't an overwhelming focus on it.

The colors and attention to detail is simply overwhelming and amazing. To know that this is a common practice in China, is something that I think not many people are aware of, so I thought I would bring it to people's attention.

Some of these things almost look like animations that have come to life.

And of course, dragons are commonplace in the whole Chinese themes, whether it be dance, or art or just story and folklore.

Photo credit: Jeff Fusco
This picture is from their web site that shows one of the non close-up views of what you could do. You basically could get a drink and do a "sip and stroll" and walk around and see whatever you like. Your ticket stub that had the Panda associated with it was good for discounts at many area restaurants that were Malaysian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese, just to name a few. It was nice to see the various Asian cultures offering the discounts together not just treating something that is Chinese as the only culture that should be associated with this event. The performers were anything from dancers to magicians to plate flippers and stackers. It was almost like part of it was a small scale circus. This is something extremely cool to see if you're in Philly in the June timeframe some year. I imagine stuff like this happens in other towns as well, and that perhaps some of this troop even moves on to another city from here. Enjoy.