Various Peculiar Zigong Craft Lanterns Historical Legends

1. Triangular Zigong Lantern

Among the traditional craft lamps, the lamp is simple in shape, easy to manufacture and widely used as a triangular lamp. It has a square mouth, a pointed bottom, and a slightly bucket shape, so it is also called "dou lamp". The triangular Zigong lantern can be hung on the door, can be used for lighting poles, and can also be used in front of the gods. Three lanterns in parallel are called "three palace lanterns", and nine lanterns in parallel are also called "nine lanterns". It is made by bundling and forming with thin sticks, pasted with red paper, with the mouth facing upward, and a small oil lamp bowl (you can also replace it with a small oil dish) for ignition, and there are also special ceramic lamp bowls for ignition.

2. Square lanterns and hexagonal Zigong lanterns

Square lanterns and hexagonal Zigong lanterns are also two traditional craft lamps named after their shapes. The lamp surface can be made of paper paste or decorated with silk yarn. Using glass as the lamp surface is better than other materials because of its light transparency. These two kinds of lamps have a wide range of uses, and are hung at the door, tea, restaurants, inns, and shops. During the period of the Republic of China, Zigong salt merchants also hung square lamps behind the sedan chairs to inflate them.

The door head hangs a square lamp or a hexagonal lamp. Usually red is used, and rich people also pay attention to the decoration of the lamp surface and paint more colorful pictures and texts. The teahouse hangs square lamps and hexagonal lamps. 

3. Wire Zigong Lanterns

Fushun County Chronicle (the version supervised by Song Yuren) "temple altar" records: "Lingying Temple is ninety miles north of the county, near Niubodu Moon Cliff, built in Wanli in the Ming Dynasty, with wire lanterns between the beams. Shengguo Temple is in the county. Sixty miles to the north, near Niufodu, built in the second year of Jingtai in the Ming Dynasty, there are also iron wire Zigong lanterns between the beams. According to legend, the lanterns of the two temples are a pair.”

4. Carved iron Zigong Lanterns

It is recorded in Chinese ancient books that "The temple is located in Banqiao Dam, 70 miles west of the county. It was built in Wanli in the Ming Dynasty. There are carved iron lamps, which are lit, and the wind will not blow them out. "

5. Trotting Horse Zigong Lantern

"Trotting Horse Lantern" is a traditional craft lamp that can be rotated. Its device is to install a rotatable multi-faceted lamp or a circular cylindrical lamp in a relatively large lamp as an inner lamp. The inner lamp relies on the hot air generated by the burning candle to form an airflow, which expands and flows between the outer lamp and the inner lamp in a certain direction, driving the inner lamp to rotate. The lamp face of the inner lamp can draw or write various character stories and poems and pictures. Its elegance and vulgarity come from the ingenuity and design of the maker. In short, it is better to be novel, unique and eye-catching. The "Long Live the Motherland" and "Celebrating the Harvest" displayed in the first Zigong Spring Festival Lantern Festival are an electric "trotting house lantern".