On the first night of Lunar New Year, after eight o’clock, the crowd on New Bridge Road flows simultaneously in both directions: tourists attempting to read a paper map in the colored light, older men holding plastic bundles of mandarin oranges, couples with phones aloft, and families with kids on their shoulders. Above them all, a zodiac animal the size of a small building hangs from wires strung over the street, its paper-mâché body illuminated from within by thousands of LED lights that pulse gently between amber and gold.
Stretching as far as you can see in both directions, the surrounding lanterns are smaller, more elaborate, and wobble slightly in the warm night air. By any measures, it’s a lot to process. During the Lunar New Year, Chinatown in Singapore does not practice moderation.
The main thoroughfares of the historic district—New Bridge Road, Eu Tong Sen Street, and Upper Cross Street—become more akin to an outdoor gallery than a street during the yearly light-up. The design team behind the installations has been discreetly perfecting the formula for decades. The installations operate every night from seven in the evening until midnight, with extra hours on the first day of the new year.
The combination of traditional paper-mâché craftsmanship, which gives the larger zodiac centrepieces a warmth and handmade quality that mass-produced decorations lack, and contemporary eco-friendly LED technology, which allows them to glow for weeks without significant energy consumption, is what sets the current version apart. The actual items appear outdated. All of the light within them is current. As it happens, the tension between the two is just right.
A separate register is added by the bazaar that runs alongside the light-up. The items that Lunar New Year truly tastes like pineapple tarts, bak kwa, nian gao in various forms, roasted nuts in paper cones, and the kind of preserved plums that appear every year and are irresistible in proportion to how inexplicable that is are sold at pop-up stalls along Temple Street and Pagoda Street.
The aroma of char-grilled meat permeates the lantern light as street food merchants put up grills close to the margins of the main foot traffic. It is not subtle, but it is perfectly appropriate for the occasion. Even though the photos only show the second part, Chinatown’s Lunar New Year has always been a sensual event first and a visual one second.
Indie Singapore offers a guided heritage tour of the neighborhood that covers the history of the area, including the early Hokkien and Teochew settlers who built these streets, the shophouses whose facades are now listed heritage structures, and the temples that have been in continuous operation for more than a century, for tourists seeking more context than walking and dining can offer.
It’s one of those tours that alters your perception of a location; depending on the person, this may be a warning or a recommendation. Chinatown is visible as a warm patch of color amidst the wider lights of the central business district on the Singapore River Cruise, which offers the opposite perspective: distance and skyline, the illuminated city reflected on dark water.
Walking through Chinatown during the light-up gives you the impression that the neighborhood is doing more than just commemorating a holiday. Every year, it insists on being perceived as more than just a heritage district that presents culture to tourists; rather, it wants to be regarded as a living place with its own history and manner of marking time. The lanterns are exquisite. They make a statement as well. It is not a coincidence that they ascend on precisely the same streets each year.
