Paper boats, ahoy!

Fishermen carry sea lamps to set them into the water. [Photo by Ding Wangjing/China Daily]

Many things have changed since most livelihoods depended on fishing on the sea. Nowadays, many people are farming fish and other seafoods, and tourism is big business, too. The fishermen, meanwhile, work on bigger ships with better equipment.

As people no longer live at the mercy of the elements, the celebrations of the sea goddess evolved from superstition to folk entertainment, says Jiang.

Usually, people start making sea lamps two or three days before the day. Some simply buy a lamp.

In the days before the 13th day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, 58-year-old Xu Yonggui, an inheritor of the local intangible cultural heritage, stayed busy making sea lamps in the yard of his home.

He would create the frame with corn stalks and slim branches of locust trees, steady the mast, form the hull with colorful paper, line the ropes with colored flags and set a candle inside the hull.

Within half an hour, Xu had made a sea lamp.

In the past week, he sold 70 such lamps, each at about 20 yuan ($3.20).