Spring Festival Customs in Lishui

The scale of the 2025 Spring Festival

According to a report by the district media centre dated February 2025, 40 great dragons danced in Lishui at the Spring Festival of 2025. The figure is the report's own, for that festival only, and is not to be written as a standing scale.

The customary performances

The same report records that the 2025 Spring Festival featured a number of traditional customs, including dragon-lantern dancing, horse-lantern dancing, dragon-boat rowing and temple fairs; the names are reproduced as recorded.

The district government's "Folk Customs" page lists separate entries for the Luoshan Great Dragon, the Putang Bridge Cishan Temple Fair, the horse-lantern dance, the Zhetang Shehuo fire festival and the lion dance gathering. The page records that the Luoshan Great Dragon originated in the Ming dynasty, that its body is nearly a hundred metres long and that some five hundred people take part, and that it is styled "the greatest dragon south of the Yangtze". It also records that the horse lantern is made of bamboo splints covered with paper, with candles in head and tail, and is fixed to the performer's waist.

Related dragon-boat activity

According to a report by the district media centre, the fourth Lishui Honglan dragon-boat race, sponsored under the name Nongshanghang Cup, was held in 2026 with 27 teams, and the report puts on-site and online onlookers together at 200,000. The race is not part of the Spring Festival customs; it is listed here only as a comparable item within the same body of folk practice, and the relation between the two has not been verified.

Uncertainties

First, the figure of 40 great dragons is the report's own for the Spring Festival of 2025; no figures for other years are held by this site, and no standing scale is inferred.

Second, the names of the customary performances follow their sources; the same practice may appear under different names in different sources, and the names are reproduced without being merged.

Third, the dates given for temple fairs and similar practices are approximations in their sources; they are neither converted nor asserted here.