Playful innovations upgrade vacation fun

An unusual lantern show designed for Spring Festival was tested live recently in bustling Nanhu Lake Park in Tangshan, Hebei province.

What was unusual was that the Caishen lanterns — named for the god of wealth — did more than just stand passively and glow. They actually chatted with visitors.

A crowd of the curious gathered around, asking questions and receiving witty replies generated by artificial intelligence.

"We built the traditional character based on folk tales and auspicious sayings, allowing for dialogue with a sense of character," said Gao Yuan, the AI interaction project head.

Using AI, the lights blended the faces of visitors with futuristic neon makeup against a digital backdrop. This created an instant social media posting sensation.

"It used face recognition to keep people's likeness, by stylizing the makeup, hairstyle and clothing," Gao said. The idea is simply to deliver novelty and joy.

The AI carnival zone is at the heart of the park's strategic shift this year. "We wanted to upgrade from a pure traditional celebration to a future cultural experience hub," said Xing Jianfeng, executive general manager of a cultural tourism development company whose goal is to turn the lantern show into a national cultural symbol. The project is called "Playful Encounter" to attract a younger, more interactive clientele.

"AI is not a tool for showing off. It is the core engine for us to reshape experiences and tell a new urban story," Xing said.

While AI adds playfulness to traditional lanterns in Tangshan, other destinations have taken the fusion of technology and tradition to the skies.

Farther east, in the Beidaihe district of Qinhuangdao, Hebei, the night sky during the New Year holiday displayed a breathtaking fusion.

Nightly performances with around 1,000 drones will be staged until March 4. They will fly in formation as the ancient art of datiehua is performed.

It involves striking molten iron to create fiery sparks. Rounding out the spectacular visual will be China's traditional Kongming floating sky lanterns.

"The core idea has tradition as the base and technology as the wings," said Li Weijie, director of the Beidaihe tourism and culture bureau. "We wanted to present an immersive Spring Festival feast that's both culturally rooted and vibrantly modern."

After the show started, it followed a carefully choreographed rhythm. A silent swarm of drones first painted luminous auspicious patterns and local landscapes across the sky.

Then, as the digital display continued, artisans unleashed a torrent of molten iron sparks, their warm, golden light dancing against the cool light of the drones. Finally, as the drones faded, thousands of physical Kongming lanterns, lit by visitors, floated peacefully upward.

"I was excited to see the drones painting the sky while fiery golden sparks poured down like shooting stars," tourist Liu Lu said about a test run. "The technology brought a fresh, trendy vibe, but it still felt rooted in tradition."

Shi Gangqiang, general manager of organizer Jifa Agricultural Dream Kingdom, said, "It was an innovation born from collision. The ancient cultural crafts gained a bigger stage through this integration with technology."

Meanwhile, as drones lit up the sky, technology became a storyteller for ancient walls down in Handan, Hebei.

At Guangfu Ancient City, a 3D wall-mapping light show — "Dream Back to Handan" — was projected directly onto the ancient city wall. It has been a nighttime magnet since its 2024 debut, boosting the number of visitors at night by 180 percent last year over 2024, according to Zhou Zhihong, a local authority in cultural tourism.

What attracts tourists are the creative chapters, such as "Tai Chi Elegance", which brings local history and culture to life.

"We used light as language and culture as the soul," said Li Dongchuan, the show's director. "The goal is to help the audience understand the city's heritage through visual impact."

A visitor surnamed Zhou from Jiangsu province was captivated during her trip to Handan in January.

"When the tai chi visuals flowed over that ancient wall, it felt like a profound, modern dialogue with history," she said.

The show has also energized the local economy. Yang Lin, who runs a cultural gift shop in the ancient city, has seen evening foot traffic triple and sales jump more than 200 percent during holidays and on weekends. "Before the light show, the streets were quiet after 6 pm. Now, business peaks at night," she said.

From interactive AI lanterns and drone shows to wall-mapping spectacles about history, activities during this year's Spring Festival showcased how technology is being integrated into the holiday fabric across China.

In Jining, Shandong province, the 2026 Shandong Robot Spring Festival Gala offered a unique performance featuring collaboration by humans and robots, blending cultural heritage with cutting-edge technology.

Meanwhile in Guangdong province, the 2026 Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Spring Festival Gala integrated AI and robots operating cameras to combine art with intelligent technology.

"Technology is the key driving force for enhancing the quality of tourism products and optimizing the supply model," Sun Zhenjie, a professor at the School of Tourism at Hebei University of Economics and Business, said in a January article.

The large-scale use of digital technologies — VR, AR, MR and AI — can promote the transformation of scenic areas and museums, as well as create digital restorations of ancient sites or reenactment of historical scenes, Sun said. This creates a new tourism experience by combining the virtual with the real.