Qinhuai Lantern Festival

Also called the Jinling Lantern Festival, this Nanjing tradition reaches back over a thousand years and runs each year from the Lunar New Year to the Lantern Festival along the Qinhuai River.

Combining lantern display, festival and market, it hangs every kind of Qinhuai lantern while crowds view the lights, cruise the river and stroll the fair — Nanjing's grandest New Year folk event.

Listed in the first national batch in 2006 under folklore, it bears the praise 'the foremost lantern fair under heaven' and 'Qinhuai lanterns are unrivalled'.

It is held mainly along the Confucius Temple–Qinhuai scenic belt.