Wildly popular China Lights to return in 2017

First, organizers extended by a week the October run of China Lights at the Boerner Botanical Gardens in Whitnall Park.

Now, before the wildly successful lantern festival ends its first-ever Midwest show on Nov. 6, Milwaukee County parks officials and event producers confirm they're already planning a return engagement in 2017.

More than 60,000 people — including a throng of nearly 10,000 last Saturday — had packed into the exhibit as of last weekend, with two weeks to go, said Susie Devcich, chief of recreation and business operations for the parks department. The show opened Oct. 1.

Customers have been using shuttles from the park's golf course parking lot, or walking long distances on the park's roadways to get in on the busiest days. Some have been turned away because closing time was approaching and the lines were still so long.

"It has exceeded our expectations," she said.

While most visitors are from southeastern Wisconsin, the exhibit has attracted visitors from across the state, northern Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and parts beyond. And word of mouth seems at least partly responsible for increasing attendance as the show goes on.

No one expected the 10,000 people who showed up last Saturday, according to event organizer Ralph Garrity, president of Festival Productions Inc. Shortly after 8:30 p.m., officials told the hundreds of customers still waiting in line that if they didn't already have a ticket, they would not get in.  As lines built up again Sunday, workers closed parking lots to prevent overcrowding, he said.

Now, online ticket sales have been suspended at least through Monday in an attempt to manage the size of crowds, and parks officials continue to encourage the public to come Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday (the show is closed Monday) to avoid weekend congestion.

The best viewing experience likely would be a day with 4,000 and no more than 5,000 visitors, Garrity said. On days when attendance reaches that capacity, Boerner workers will admit more people only as others exit.

'Cultural immersion'

Once inside, organizers say, it takes at least an hour to view the 40 displays of lighted lantern sculptures spread across nine acres of the gardens.  And that doesn't include time spent checking out concessions, vendors or stage performers.

Several parts of the display cause bottlenecks of their own, Devcich said, because they are natural photo opportunities: the monkey gallery, a series of arches; the Chinese palace lantern; a 200-foot-long undulated dragon; the gallery of lanterns suspended over the entire length of a boardwalk through the wetland; and the towering wealth and glory fan decked with blooming peonies and peacocks.

Other lantern sculptures are assembled to form swans, pandas, penguins, zebras, giraffes, fish, fairies, flowers, snails, grasshoppers and butterflies with flapping wings.

Display number 27 on the tour is a group of Kylin, a fantasy beast that is a spiritual animal in China. It is comprised of the body of a deer, tail of an ox, feet of a horse and scales of a fish. A close look reveals the bodies of these Kylin are not made of fabric, like the hundreds of other sculptures. Instead, they are made up of hundreds of tiny bottles filled with colored liquid attached to a metal frame.

"This is a complete cultural immersion," Devcich said of China Lights.

Artisans from China

Parks department staff could not have produced an outdoor exhibit of this scale on their own, Devcich said. That is why she reached out to Garrity in 2015 when a representative of the Sichuan Provincial government asked Devcich to consider hosting the event. Sichuan has set a goal of holding 100 lantern festivals in 100 cities worldwide over five years.

Garrity, the producer of Milwaukee's lakefront air show, signed an agreement in May of this year to bring the exhibit here. Materials were shipped from China to Long Beach, Calif., where containers were placed on a train to Chicago and then trucked to Milwaukee.

Creating lighted lanterns is a custom that started a few thousand years ago in China. Zigong City in Sichuan is home to 380 lantern-making companies with 80,000 artisans. A group of 28 artisans arrived in Milwaukee on Aug. 31 to begin making and assembling the sculptures.

Festival Productions' contract with one of the Zigong City companies, Sichuan Tianyu Culture Communication Co., provides for 60% of ticket sale revenue to go to the Chinese company, with 40% going to the Park People. The Park People, a nonprofit company that sponsors projects to upgrade and increase public use of all county parks, will reimburse Festival Productions for its expenses and fees. The remainder will go into an account for improvements at Boerner.

The local cost of putting on the show will be close to $200,000 and includes permanent electrical service for the shrub mall on the south end of the gardens to run food and beverage concessions, as well as extra staff and portable toilets, according to Devcich and Garrity. A $39,000 state grant helped promote the exhibit in Chicago and locally, corporate sponsors contributed an additional $30,000, Garrity's company put in more than $100,000, with the rest coming from the parks department.

The parks department is getting the concession revenue, which should more than cover its costs. Boerner also gains use of the new electrical service in the shrub mall, a popular place for weddings and other special events, Devcich said. "This will be an advantage for us," she said.

The 2017 version of China Lights will be held from mid-September through the end of October, Garrity said.

One of the new lantern sculptures is already being designed: a four-story replica of the Statue of Liberty.

Shuttle service between the Whitnall Park golf course parking lot and the exhibit will run every 30 minutes. Advance tickets will be sold at the Boerner visitor center daily from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Box office sales resume at 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays until parking lots are full. The box office at the entry to the exhibit opens at 5 p.m. Stage performances with acrobats and juggling are at 6:30 and 8 p.m.