Handmake rabbit lanterns for Lantern Festival

A shop owner puts out rabbit lanterns to sell yesterday in a downtown spot near Yuyuan Garden.

Handmade rabbit lanterns are popular in the run-up to Lantern Festival — the 15th day of the Chinese new year — as they are believed to bring good luck.

And rather than buying plastic ones, some families are opting for traditional handmade bunny lanterns.

Indeed, some buy a set of materials — wire or bamboo, thin paper, wooden rollers and candles — to have fun with their kids making their own bunny.

Shanghai Daily visited one of the remaining old handmade rabbit lantern stores in Yuyuan Garden yesterday. The tiny store, on Fangbang Road, has been there for more than 10 years selling embroidery crafts and lanterns. And what the owners, 50-year-old Chen Zhigang and his 45-year-old wife, surnamed Wu, are most proud of is the rabbit lanterns they make.

These cute white rabbits with big red eyes are very popular among kids, say the couple.

According to Wu, to make a medium-sized bunny lantern takes four hours.

"The most important thing you need to complete a rabbit lantern is patience," she said.

Prices range from 30 (US$4.7) to 50 yuan. Buyers can also ask the couple to customize a rabbit lantern for them with the size and paper color they want.

"The largest rabbit lantern we made was one for a company in Songjiang District. It was nearly two meters in length and took two days to make."

This giant rabbit cost 1,500 yuan.

Wu said some parents are happy to pay several hundred yuan for large customized lanterns for their kids.

Within a few minutes of Shanghai Daily being there, three customers had bought large bunny lanterns.

One father said that he likes the traditional handmade lanterns but hadn't made one for his son, which made him decide to buy one instead.

Another father, surnamed Zhu, 31, said he found the store online and bought a handmade rabbit lantern because both his wife and child like it.

A 67-year-old grandfather, surnamed Ping, a frequent customer of the store, chose a rabbit with a red ring on its neck for his 5-year-old grandson.

"Now, we sell 60 to 70 rabbit lanterns per day and this figure is likely to increase as the Lantern Festival draws near," Chen said.

As well as retail, wholesale to primary schools, kindergartens and craft classes for children is another important source of income for the small shop.

So far, there have been four local schools making orders in their store, with the number of lanterns ordered ranging from the 10s to more than 100.

During our conversation, another frequent customer, Qiu Baowu, the leader of a local art and crafts performance group, ordered 100 sets of lantern materials which will be later used in his craft classes.

"I always buy materials here. Our team will have 10 classes on March 1 to teach children how to make rabbit lanterns."

The large demand for rabbit lanterns before the Lantern Festival sees Chen's whole family — including Chen's mother and son — set to work churning out paper bunnies.

Chen and Wu, both from Yancheng City, in neighboring Jiangsu Province, moved to Shanghai many years ago. They first sold some other crafts in their store until one day they made a rabbit lantern for their son and were asked if it was for sale by customers.

"Now we sell red lanterns for the Spring Festival, rabbit lanterns for the Lantern Festival and other crafts for other times," Wu said.

The history of rabbit lanterns can be traced back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties, ancient people in Ningdu County, Jiangxi Province.

They saw the rabbit as a lucky animal, carried rabbit lanterns and paraded them in their villages between the 10th and 15th of the first lunar month.

However, this ancient craft faces an uncertain future.

Handmade rabbit lanterns, which could be seen everywhere in Yuyuan Garden 10 years ago, are now only sold in very few stores, Wu said.

Now many sellers favor the mass-produced plastic variety instead, she added.