Laba Lantern

Name and what it denotes

The public notice of January 2024 lists the Laba Lantern among the newly included projects of the fourth batch of district-level representative items of intangible cultural heritage, under folk customs; the applying area or unit is Hefeng Town and the recommended guardian unit is the Hefeng Town Culture and Sports Centre.

The notice says nothing about what "laba" denotes. Both the Nanjing Daily of 15 February 2026 and the report by Xinhua Jiangsu of the same date, writing of the New Year customs of Hefeng Town, read: the "walking horse lantern (Laba Lantern)" carries on the tradition of the "dragon and horse spirit". It follows that the Laba Lantern and the walking horse lantern are two names for the same activity: the notice uses "Laba Lantern", while reports and local listings of the annual customs mostly use the walking horse lantern, or set the two side by side in brackets. Whether "laba" refers to the form of the lantern, to an instrument or to the arrangement of a procession has no source in this library.

Place of transmission and dates

In the list of Spring Festival folk events of Lishui published in January 2020 by the official account of the Nanjing Municipal Administration of Culture and Tourism, the Laba Lantern appears under Hefeng Town at Doumenxu Village of Kongzhen Community, on the fourteenth to sixteenth days of the first lunar month of that year. The notice of Lishui Release of February 2025 for the Lantern Festival lists the Laba Lantern of Doumenxu, Hefeng Town, on 11 to 13 February. Both name Doumenxu, the village name appearing in two forms, and this library therefore gives Doumenxu Village of Kongzhen Community, Hefeng Town, as the seat of transmission. The dates differ between the two years, which shows that they change from year to year; no fixed annual schedule is written here.

Relation to the other items of Hefeng Town

A report of the Hefeng Town People's Government of May 2024 places the black-rice festival, the Lishui white tea craft, the Yiqidun legend, the Laba Lantern and the deity-carving craft side by side as the town's items of intangible cultural heritage, and the same event presented plaques to five of them. Among the items held in this library, the Laba Lantern is the only lantern folk custom among those applied for by Hefeng Town in the fourth batch, and the only one that takes the form of a walking horse lantern.

Transmission and safeguarding

The public notice lists no representative bearer for this project, and the third-batch district-level list of bearers (2017) records none for it either.

Uncertainties

First, what "laba" denotes is undecided. The notice is silent, and the press sets the two names side by side in brackets, so that this library treats them as one activity; no reliable source has been found for what "laba" refers to in the making of the lantern.

Second, the category requires note. The notice places the item under folk customs, not under traditional dance or traditional arts, whereas the dragon- and horse-lantern items in this library are mostly placed under traditional dance. The notice does not explain the difference, and it is reproduced as it stands; the form is not inferred from other items.

Third, the dates of performance are annual arrangements and differ between 2020 and 2025; they must not be written as a fixed schedule.

Fourth, the "presentation of plaques to five items" reported by the Hefeng Town government is an event of May 2024. Presenting a plaque and entering an item in the list are not the same thing, and it must not be used to write that the item has been formally published.

Fifth, the recommended guardian unit is the Hefeng Town Culture and Sports Centre and the applying area or unit is Hefeng Town. These are two different columns of the notice's table and must not be used interchangeably.