Following Ledu’s Nine-Bend Lantern Paths

In Qilidian village on 11 February 2025, preparations were underway for Ledu’s Nine-Bend Yellow River lantern festival. Villagers began with the ground: white lines marked the plan, wooden poles rose along it, and ropes joined the poles. The winding arrangement follows a nine-palace and eight-trigram layout, giving the lantern field its turns and passages.

A Qinghai Daily report counted about 3,600 poles in that year’s array. Each handmade lantern added another small composition to the route. Painted flowers, birds, insects and figures from stories appeared on the shades, turning an outlined path into a succession of illuminated images.

The report followed inheritor Zhao Shirong, who had helped prepare the festival since childhood and became its chief array organizer at sixteen. Alongside the older forms, he devised pumpkin, peacock and ruyi-shaped lanterns. His work changed the silhouette of individual lights while keeping them within the shared arrangement.

The custom is associated with four villages in Ledu’s Ganggou area: Qilidiandong, Qilidian, Lijia and Shuimowan. It is held twice in three years, a rhythm locally called “three years, two ends.” The 2025 account describes three festival nights, from the fourteenth to the sixteenth day of the first lunar month. Walking the winding array carries wishes for health and good fortune; the completed route joins those wishes to the practical labor of marking, planting poles, making lanterns and hanging them.