The Costume of China / Picturesque Representations of the Dress and Manners of the Chinese

There is no nation so fond of illuminations and fire-works as the Chinese, and no nation has exerted its skill so effectually in the multitude of contrivances to exhibit light. Their lanterns are as various in shape as in materials. The most common are of painted paper. The most beautiful and ornamental of silk gauze, finely painted and stretched on frames that are not deficient in carving and curious workmanship, and decorated with tassels of silk of various colours. Other lanterns are round and cylindrical, and of one single piece of thin transparent horn, sometimes of an immense size. At certain times in the year, but more particularly in the month of February, they celebrate what has been called the Feast of Lanterns, when every body in the street carries some transparency or other made in every possible form: some of them like fishes, some like beasts of various kinds, and others birds. Some resemble trees and shrubs, with flowers and fruits, each in their appropriate colours. Those lanterns borne by the man in the print are of the most ordinary kind.