The story
Yuejin Lantern Festival in Yanshui
Since 2012, the Tainan City Government has staged an art-focused lantern festival along the Yuejin Harbor waterfront in Yanshui District each Lantern Festival season. Rather than traditional zodiac-themed lanterns, artists design site-specific light installations reflected across the water, giving the event a distinct identity among Taiwan's many Lantern Festival displays and, in 2018, an international Red Dot design award.
Yanshui's canal, known as Yuejin Harbor, once linked the inland town to Taiwan's western coastal trade routes, but silting over the twentieth century left the waterway shallow and largely forgotten, its banks overgrown and its role in the town's economy long since ended.