Torch festival in Jinjiang

Shanqian village's traditional torch festival is hosted as an event to pray for blessings in the new year and attracts villagers, visitors and homecoming overseas Chinese. [Photo by Li Guibin/Xinhua]

Thousands of bamboo torches form an illuminated "dragon" meandering through Shanqian village every year.

This are the villagers, along with visitors and homecoming overseas Chinese, praying for an auspicious year ahead. The tradition formed some 300 years ago in the process of fighting a flood disaster and was listed as Jinjiang's intangible heritage in 2013.

Similar to the summer celebrations of ethnic groups such as the Yi people of southwest China, Shanqian residents' torch festival falls into the Chinese New Year festivities in late winter. The date used to be decided by divination annually and was fixed on the ninth day of the first lunar month years ago.

On this special day, banners, gongs and drums and crackers herald the spectacular parade that lights up the night with hundreds of torches - the longest ones could easily exceed three meters, and even the short ones are at least one meter.

Every family in Shanqian knows how to make the torches with bamboo, yellow rag paper and peanut oil. Two or three days ahead of the event, villagers start preparing torches, said Cai Zhushan, secretary of the village Party committee.

Shanqian has a permanent population of 2,600, while 3,000 from the village are residing abroad in places such as the US, Canada, Vietnam, Singapore and Australia.