Thousands of people in Taiwan and China celebrated the Lantern Festival by releasing paper lanterns into the night sky, visiting light installations and snacking on glutinous rice dumplings.

The Chinese Lantern Festival marks the end of Chinese New Year celebrations and symbolises the coming of spring.

At the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in northern Taiwan, thousands lined up in the rain to light up and observe wish lanterns.

Villagers in Taiwan started using paper lanterns more than a century ago to signify to others it was safe to return after bandits raided their communities. Today, the lanterns carry hopes of peace and prosperity in the New Year.

A total of nine waves of lantern releases were interspersed with music and dance performances as part of the festival. The stars of the show were a pair of 3.6-metre (12-foot) pink and golden snake-shaped lanterns, in a nod to the Year of the Snake.

People in China also celebrated the Lantern Festival, although no officially organised event there sees the release of large amounts of paper lanterns.

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Instead, Beijing residents queued for glutinous rice dumplings – the festival’s most sought-after snack – and visited light shows across the city. The largest among them, at the Beijing Garden Expo Park, in the city’s suburbs, displayed more than 10,000 installations of various sizes and designs.

Some installations were up to 18 metres (60 feet) tall and depicted everything from cultural landmarks to traditional symbols such as the God of Fortune, dragons and phoenixes to modern interpretations, such as a cyberpunk-style Beijing opera headdress.