Lanterns by the bay

The lanterns at the Mid-Autumn Festival @ The Gardens 2014 range from bright, colourful animal sculptures to large floating Chinese palaces.

The festival, which features 58 sets of lanterns, is jointly organised by the Chinese Newspapers Division of Singapore Press Holdings, People’s Association and Gardens by the Bay.

A team of 30 lantern-makers from Zigong, in the Sichuan province of China, had toiled over the designs now prominently featured around the gardens.

Mr Fan Hu, the manager of Hui Teng, the company that designed and built the lanterns, and on-site supervisor Yang Jun Long shared some of the challenges and difficulties they had to overcome.


PALACE CHALLENGE

One of the most difficult lanterns that they had to build was the 30m-long floating palace, found on one of the rivers around the gardens.

"Building a floating lantern is never easy," said Mr Yang.

"We have to accurately measure the depth of the river and the amount of weight that we can put on the float."

But the hardest part was when they had to take the float onto the water.

"Because the lantern was so large, the workers building the float had to physically wade through the river to install the sculpture."

They were also working on an extremely tight deadline.

Mr Fan said construction started only in August, a month away from the opening.

"Normally, the time frame allotted for the construction of such lanterns would span two to three months. This time, we had only one month to complete them," he said.

Fortunately, he had a team of extremely skilled workers.

Then, four days before the opening ceremony, when they thought their troubles were over, the last problem hit them.

The lights in the display used more power than they had expected. This problem never surfaced since they had never tested out the entire exhibition as a whole.

POWERLESS

Mr Yang said: "A few days before the festival, we tried turning all the lights on at once and found that we didn't have enough power to do so."

It was a mad rush to bring in more generators to power the sections.

Despite all the issues they had run into, both men agreed that their hard work has paid off.

Said Mr Fan: "Designing and building all these beautiful lanterns under such a short time was no easy task, but seeing all the visitors enjoying the view of the sculptures makes me really happy and proud."

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FYI

WHAT: MID-AUTUMN FESTIVAL @ THE GARDENS 2014

WHERE: Gardens by the Bay

WHEN: Now until Sept 14, from 6pm to 11pm (Monday to Friday) and 3pm to 11pm (Saturday to Sunday)

HOW MUCH: Admission is free

The lanterns at the Mid-Autumn Festival @ The Gardens 2014 range from bright, colourful animal sculptures to large floating Chinese palaces.

The festival, which features 58 sets of lanterns, is jointly organised by the Chinese Newspapers Division of Singapore Press Holdings, People's Association and Gardens by the Bay.