On Oct. 6, from 4-8 p.m., over 30 Aragon students joined hundreds of others from the Bay Area to meet at Foster City’s Leo J. Ryan park for a Water Lantern Festival. People gathered for the festivities that included a scavenger hunt, live music, lantern assembling and decorating and floating rice-paper lanterns on the lagoon.
Some attendees went to the event for family sentimentality, as lantern festivals are a common way to mourn in many cultures.
“The festival started as a way to bring people together, but some people go to let go of lost ones … or some people just go to have fun with their friends,” said freshman Carissa Yang.
Students were also generally excited to attend because the event’s social aspect.
“It was special to me because I got a chance to hang out with friends from San Mateo [High School],” said freshman Susannah Tsai. “They went to my middle school and I haven’t seen them for a couple of months.”
Many students were also intrigued because they had never experienced a lantern festival before.
“I think it’s just that it’s really unique because we don’t get a lot of things like that in San Mateo and Foster City,” said senior Anastasia Yang. “I’ve never seen a … lantern festival around here.”
Carissa Yang had previously seen similar events in pop culture.
“I was looking forward to it since the end of eighth grade,” Carissa Yang said. “I’ve always wanted to go to a lantern festival because [the scene from] Tangled and its floating lights [were inspiring], except this one was a water lantern festival.”
Others, like senior Srishty Bhavsar, went to the Water Lantern Festival as a method of stress relief.
“I’m applying to colleges so I’m really stressed and I wasn’t really sure if I wanted to take time out of my day to be with friends,” Bhavsar said. “It was just really relaxing, [and] really pretty. I’m really glad that I went, because if I didn’t, I would’ve felt like I missed out and I’m going to college next year.”
Students of varying backgrounds had different views on how the Water Lantern Festival’s related to culture. Freshman Maahika Samudrala could compare the lantern festival to an Indian tradition.
“It does connect with Indian culture a little bit because we have a festival called Diwali,” Samudrala said. “[It’s] where we have little lights that we put into [the] water, but instead of a whole lantern where you write stuff, it’s just like a little … pot with fire that we put in to grant our wishes.”
Anastasia Yang didn’t see a specific culture connecting to the festival, but rather described the diverse cultures represented by festival attendees through their lanterns’ art and decorations.
“I saw a lot of languages, and I’m pretty sure I saw lanterns with Chinese characters, English, and there were also Hindi characters and Korean,” Anastasia Yang said. “People just had a lot of art and things that they did to express themselves.”
Carissa Yang, for example, adorned her lantern in lyrics and poetry, which reflected her interests and emotions.
“I wrote … lyrics from a song from ‘Dear Evan Hansen,’ which is a musical, and also from ‘Next to Normal,’ which is also a musical. It’s from the last song which was called ‘Light,’ so I wrote a quote that has to do with light and it was ironic because it was a light festival,” Carissa Yang said. “On another [side], I wrote something — a poem that I wrote.”
Though student attendees each had different expectations and interpretations of the festival, they came to see the lanterns on display at the festival.
“I think my favorite part was when everyone put their lanterns in because it was dark and it lit the area up and it was just really pretty to see,” Samudrala said.
The festival also fostered a sense of community between the diverse people that attended the event.
“Putting the lanterns in was kind of like [showing] you’re part of something beautiful,” Carissa Yang said.
Foster City’s Water Lantern Festival was a beautiful event and its popularity is clearly seen through the droves of people that came to experience it this first year.
