Earlier this month, Xiaohongshu collaborated with Zaochun Le Shiji (早春乐事集) and Shanghai’s Columbia Circle to host the Intangible Cultural Heritage Handicraft Festival, a vibrant three-day event. Divided into five parts — performances, workshops, exhibitions, talks, and markets — the festival drew large crowds from November 8 to 10, becoming one of Shanghai’s most popular attractions that weekend. The handicrafts and traditions gathered together at the festival including basket weaving, embroidery, jewelry making, dough figurines, soap making, lacquer art, and much more.

Columbia Circle added a historically significant backdrop to the event: founded as the Columbia Country Club in the 1920s, the site was once on the outskirts of the city and was a popular social space for Shanghai’s American expatriate community prior to World War Two. The commercial development hosts a number of historical buildings, including a villa designed by Hungarian architect László Hudec, one of the main figures behind Shanghai’s iconic art deco architecture. Revitalized by renowned architecture firm OMA in 2016 and 2017, the space now ties together two different eras from Shanghai’s history as a cosmopolitan international city.

One highlight of the event was a parade of fish-shaped lanterns, a cultural practice from nearby Anhui province, traditionally featured in Lunar New Year celebrations to pray for peace. These lanterns, crafted from bamboo and paper, usually range in length from three to six meters. For the parade in Shanghai, the lanterns reached impressive lengths of up to eight meters. The event also featured performances of Peking Opera and Luoshan Shadow Play, a form of shadow puppetry from Henan province.

However, some visitors found the crowds overwhelming, which made it hard for them to enjoy the exquisite handicrafts in the market at a relatively slow pace. Other visitors were put off by the price of workshops. Yet the festival still demonstrated the novel ways in which cultural heritage can enrich contemporary urban life, offering a meaningful alternative to more trend-driven weekend markets, which are a common sight at Shanghai shopping centers these days. 

For those that missed the initial festival weekend, there’s an ongoing exhibition related to the fish lanterns by artists Xu Jiufeng and Qian Lihuai on at Columbia Circle until December 7. On top of that, Zaochun Le Shiji have committed to organizing another festival in Shanghai in January, with plans to expand the event series to other cities.

Banner image via Yu Bin on Xiaohongshu.