Minhang magic: Welcoming the Year of the Snake with activities galore

Minhang District welcomed the Year of the Snake with a brave embrace of the globe with its merged-IP lantern show, yet basking in its Chinese heritage and human values, as residents bid adieu to the past year.

Lion dance, an intangible culture heritage item of Maqiao Town, was staged during the 2025 Shanghai People's Spring Festival Gathering at Shanghai Exhibition Center on January 26.

The vibrant spirit from the lion dance created a delightful ambience at the Spring Festival gathering.

Back in the early Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) the Maqiao lion dance was a way for locals to celebrate important festivals.

Streets in Maqiao were narrow and crowded then. So performers had to lift their lion lanterns with bamboo sticks. Especially when they were passing a better-off household which had a bigger outdoor clearing, performers would dance with large strides to express their delight in festivities.

Lion dance was listed among Shanghai's and the national intangible culture heritage lists in 2007 and 2011, respectively.

The district also welcomed the Year of the Snake with an extension of lighting belts and bulbs on its century-old artery Humin Road, flyovers, elevated roads, bridges and roadside highrises to send its best New Year's wishes to travelers en route, together with its traditional Xinzhuang Lantern Show and lighting decoration on its commercial complexes.

The Xinzhuang Lantern Show for the Year of the Snake featured the zodiac sign of snake and traditional Chinese culture elements such as jade ruyi, a talisman of good fortune; lotus; and gold ingots. For the first time, organizers of the lantern show joined hands with Hollywood's Warner Bros to apply the classic IP "Tom and Jerry" into the lantern styles.

A haipai (Shanghai-style) village Spring Festival gala was celebrated for the 7th year in Zhaojiacun Village, Huacao Town, on January 24.

The village gala with Shanghai chic style started at 1:30pm with a hybrid of Peking Opera and hip-hop dance, which was a daring blend of the East and West cultures, followed by duet singing, teens' minority folk dance, violin performance and solo singing, magic performance, Blackpool sequence dance, comedy, clapper talk, square dance, acrobatics, Peking Opera singing and the Shanghai local Huju Opera singing.

About 20 expat residents of Huacao Town were invited to enjoy farm culture activities such as picking strawberries, tasting rural dishes, weaving a Chinese red knot and visiting a country market for special new year purchases.

Though the Spring Festival for the Year of the Snake has slid away, some events to relive the festivities are still being held, such as the traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy on legends, idioms and proverbs on snake by artist Dai Dunbang at Shanghai Jiao Tong University's Cheng Ji Gallery, and the blossom of tens of thousands of tulips of pink, orange, red and purple inside Fanghe Valley farm.

Last but not the least, the New Year's approach was further embellished by the coming of new babies. At 1:08am on the first day of the Spring Festival, Minhang District Maternal and Child Care Center helped deliver its first baby – a girl. Her pinkish little face greeted the new world like a blooming spring flower.

Moving into bigger apartments

At Lane 12 Xindong Road of Xinzhuang Town, which is the seat of the district government, Cai Junru, 69, was pasting a last calligraphy couplet on his old apartment.

The family has lived inside the 23-square-meter space for more than four decades. Soon, Cai and his wife Wu Ping would leave for a bigger apartment as the town completed the signing of agreements on renovation of old urban apartments and replaced them with better ones for its residents.

Another family duo, Wang Fenggen and Li Shunxing, has moved into their new home at Xing Qiao Xin Yuan residential neighborhood around Shenjiahu Highway in the district's Zhuanqiao Town.

On New Year's Eve, Wang, 68, was busy preparing the evening meal at her new home, as by the end of 2024, Xinzhuang had signed agreements for urban renovation or offered choices of home relocation for 265 households.

The houses at Lane 12 Xindong Road were shared apartments built around the 1970s.

Those units and other among the renovation project, however, are still close to the hearts of their dwellers.

"We'd married, seen our son growing bigger daily and spent more than 40 years here," said Wang. "Gradually our house aged and failed to meet our demands."

The Wang and Li families usually had a meal at a restaurant during the New Year family reunion as the shared kitchen was too small for them to use for the purpose.

With the dawn of a New Year, Li was delighted and overwhelmed with his brand new kitchen and a refrigerator full of ingredients.

He and his wife prepared 10 dishes as 10 is a number for blessing in Chinese tradition. They also invited their son, daughter-in-law and in-laws to dine in their much bigger apartment.

Centenary birthday and duckling carers in Gumei

At Pingyang No. 3 Neighborhood in Gumei Subdistrict, Lin Baolian, who moved there in 2004 and had just turned 100, celebrated her centenary with a big birthday cake decorated by peaches, symbolizing longevity in Chinese culture. The cake was a gift from the neighborhood community staff.

Lin launched a small textile company in the 1990s. She looked after lonely seniors, chatting and buying festival goods for them.

On her 98th birthday two years ago she was still able to sing the lyrics of "Fishing Boat's Light (《渔光曲》)," a song portraying the peaceful and thrifty life of a Chinese fishermen family in the 1930s.

Not surprising, since she was born into a family of boatmen in an ancient water town on the eastern banks of the Huangpu River in 1925.

Inside Gumei Park, sanitation workers Zhong and his wife spent the Spring Festival with 30-odd ducklings.

Some of them gracefully walked and waggled their bodies on shore, some exposed themselves to the sunshine, and some swam and flipped their feet, kicking waves of green and lush water weeds.

The majority of the ducks were donated or were freed on site by nearby residents, who hoped the birds may somehow enrich the vibe of the park.

"There are about 30 of them and some chicks. Their current number is not a burden for the park's sanitation workers but their presence is great fun for visitors," said Zhong's wife.

The couple hail from Quanzhou in southeastern Fujian Province, a UNESCO world intangible culture heritage city, and about 750 kilometers from Shanghai.

They tend the ducklings well on an isle of a lake in the park, where little red lanterns are hung on branches of trees and the wooden duck sheds are made cozy with thick straws inside and some utensils are filled full with food.

"Nearby school canteens and restaurants donate the food and some residents brought the duck sheds personally," said Zhong, who now lives with his wife inside a cottage in Gumei Park.

"Many people visit the park during the Spring Festival, so it is necessary for us to be available to maintain sanitation," he added. "We video-chatted with some relatives and that counted as an online family reunion."