Hsiao Tsai-kan, now nearly 100 years old, has been recognized as a conservator of the Hsinchu intangible cultural heritage of festive lanterns. Making these lanterns has been his passion in life.
Hsiao’s daughter Hsiao Tsai-ching (left) is also a lantern artist, learning by constant exposure to her father’s work from a young age. Father and daughter can reminisce about hurrying to make lanterns in time for festivals in days gone by.
Hsiao carefully shapes the wire frameworks with pliers. As soon as he begins working on a piece, he becomes completely immersed in his own world of festive lanterns.
This lantern made to mark the incoming Year of the Horse in 2026 adds a festive air to the occasion.
In Taiwanese culture, lanterns have always symbolized good wishes and a bright future. At the Lunar New Year, many people visit temples to light lanterns.
Festive lantern maker Hsiao Tsai-kan, who each year for decades has been bringing handmade lanterns to the Hsinchu Governor City God Temple, is a master craftsman who responds to his faith with light.
Hsinchu born and bred
Hsiao Tsai-kan, born in 1927, is one of Taiwan’s leading festive lantern craftsmen. He has been making such lanterns for over 60 years, and his works are famous for their well-organized structure and detailed interplay of shadow and light. In 2007 he was elected to the Taiwan Crafts Workshop by the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute, and in 2024 he was recognized as a conservator of his art form when the Hsinchu City Cultural Affairs Bureau designated festive lanterns as intangible cultural heritage. Such accolades affirm his contributions to festive lantern craftsmanship.
Hsiao’s birthplace of Hsinchu was at one time a major bastion of traditional festive lantern making in Taiwan. The City God Temple held a festive lantern display as early as 1932.
Lanterns made by Hsiao won top honors at the Hsinchu City God Temple’s Lantern Festival competition for three straight years, earning him a replica of the temple’s horizontal door plaque. Since then, he has been continually invited to submit works for various local lantern festivals, making festive lanterns into his true calling. Every year he competes against artists from many backgrounds, finding inexhaustible joy in the process.
Lantern-making techniques
Hsiao didn’t have any teacher, but mastered his craft on his own. He has never made preliminary drawings, instead creating his designs in his head. “I learned super-fast, and I could replicate everything I saw,” he recalls.
Every festive lantern starts with a framework made from metal wire, after which the positions of the internal lights are arranged, and finally the lantern is covered with cloth. The first step, making the framework, is the most difficult and crucial. With Hsiao’s lanterns, one can tell the theme and posture just from looking at the framework. It is like the skeleton of a living thing and supports the entire weight, he explains. However, it cannot be overly complicated, or when the lantern is lit the shadow lines cast on the fabric cover by the excessive inner wires will destroy the purity of the visual effect.
Lanterns as art
Hsiao’s lanterns have long since transcended the level of mere festive adornments and become more like 3D works of art. His favorite themes are what he calls the “three wonders”: the dragon, the phoenix, and the qilin (another mythical creature, often called the “Chinese unicorn”). Since there are no actual examples of these fantastical beasts, all of which are rooted in Chinese culture, they provide the artist with maximum scope for employing his imagination.
In Hsiao’s work Auspicious Lion Playing with a Ball, the expression of the lion, vivid and filled with childlike pleasure, is frozen at the moment of play. The piece Auspicious Peacock, meanwhile, features a beautiful display of plumage, with flashing lights inside the eyespots of the tail feathers and a dahlia-blossom base with meticulously constructed layered petals. The work is beautiful without being gaudy.
Hsiao loves to be creative. For the lantern Heavenly Steed Soaring Across the Skies (a metaphor for imaginativeness), executed for the Fo Guang Shan Buddhist organization in 2002, he used electric motors to move the flying horse’s head, tail, and wings. He racked his brain to find ways to make the horse lifelike and vivid.
He also incorporates current events into his works. During the Sunflower Student Movement of 2014, when students occupied the Legislative Yuan for 585 hours, Hsiao stuck five, eight, and five sunflowers onto a work made during this period, showcasing this historic event on his lantern.
Hsiao, now aged 98, has stopped making large lanterns in recent years. However, his daughter Hsiao Tsai-ching, also a lantern artist, says that every Lunar New Year her father still makes several lanterns for the festivities at the Hsinchu City God Temple—a gesture of his enduring devotion to that deity. When the annual activities come to an end, what remains is the glow linking art, faith, and the land.
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