Quick Answer: What Is a Chinese Revolving Lantern?
A Chinese revolving lantern (走马灯, zǒumǎdēng) makes a scene appear to move. In the traditional heat-driven design, rising warm air turns a wheel inside the lantern. The wheel turns a shaft carrying paper figures. Light shows the figures, or their shadows, as they pass around the lamp. [1][2][3]
- Air: Warm air rises inside the lantern.
- Motion: Angled blades and a shaft turn the moving part.
- Image: Riders, animals or other figures repeat in a circle. [1][2][3]
To understand the effect, follow the heat and the image separately. [1][2]
A row of horses can pass the same window in a lantern again and again. The paper horses keep their shapes, but each passes into the light and then disappears around the next side. From outside, the rhythm of that movement can read as a chase.
How Rising Air Turns the Figures
In the China Science and Technology Museum’s example, heated air rises from below. That upward flow meets tilted blades on a wheel above the light source. The force on each sloping blade has a sideways component. Because the blades are tilted in the same direction around the wheel, those sideways pushes turn the wheel and the vertical shaft. The linked paper figures then revolve with the shaft. [1][7]
The turning part can be hidden by the lantern cover. Its motion comes from a current of air moving through the inside. The source of light also supplies heat in the candle-driven example. The lamp’s glow serves the visible picture, while its heat supplies movement. This gives the design a particular place among Chinese lanterns. [1][2][7]
How the Lantern Makes a Moving Picture
A Shiquan County craft account describes cutouts turning between the light and the lantern’s paper shade. The local lantern often has six sides like a palace lantern. Its frame, the pattern carried inside and the shade are made as distinct parts of the finished effect. The light casts the cutouts’ silhouettes on that shade. The shade stays in place while the cutouts travel around the shaft. The light and the path of the paper figures together determine where the shadow appears on the shade. [2]
Other arrangements can make a moving figure or a turning scene visible more directly. An English account of Suzhou lanterns describes a circle of cut paper figures through which a story can unfold. As the wheel comes around again, the same figures reappear in the same order. [3][4]
Song Records and a Lantern in Victoria
The science museum describes revolving lanterns as popular in the Song dynasty. A historical study discusses the Southern Song poet Fan Chengda’s account of festival lanterns, which includes a description of riders in moving shadows. The poem records the visible effect. The historical study also cites a Qing account that describes a paper wheel turning over a candle. These sources describe the lantern at different dates and with different kinds of detail. [1][5]
The Royal BC Museum has an early twentieth-century Chinese Freemason’s lantern from Victoria’s Chinatown. The museum describes the heat from two light bulbs turning a fan and shaft. Riders circle on a bamboo ring. A separate movement in the painted panels makes a deer nod and crab pincers move. Those small motions accompany the larger turn of the riders, giving the audience two scales of movement to watch. The bulbs in the museum’s description provide heat as well as light, keeping the revolving motion dependent on air flow. [4]
Where the Design Is Still Explained and Made
Panji District in Anhui records its revolving lantern tradition as a Huainan municipal heritage item from 2018. Its account describes a cylindrical paper screen attached to a turning shaft. A museum lesson from Hangzhou presents a related blade-wheel mechanism and explains why horses are associated with the name. [6][7]
Panji’s account calls attention to the inner cylinder. The Hangzhou lesson emphasizes the relation between the blades and the figures. The maker shapes paper and organizes images. A museum can show how the parts move so a visitor can connect the visible picture with the mechanism that carries it. [1][6][7]
FAQs About Chinese Revolving Lanterns
Why is it called a galloping-horse lantern?
The name refers to the appearance of horses and riders moving around the lantern. Other figures and stories can also be carried by the turning mechanism. [2][3][7]
Does a revolving lantern always need a candle?
Traditional examples often use candle heat. The Royal BC Museum describes a lantern in which heat from light bulbs turns the moving parts. [1][4]
Does the outside of a zoumadeng rotate?
In a common design the inside turns while the outer shade stays in place. The shaft may carry cutout figures or a cylindrical paper scene. [1][2][6]
Sources
[1] China Science and Technology Museum. Revolving Lantern
[2] Shiquan County Cultural Center. Traditional Running-Horse Lanterns
[3] China Culture. Chinese Colored Lanterns: Suzhou
[4] Royal BC Museum. Chinese Freemason’s Lantern: Tradition in Felicities
[5] Zhang Yuyan, Journal of the Chinese Society for the History of Science and Technology. Revolving Lanterns and Lamp Fuel
[6] Ding Xiaodong, Panji District Government. Revolving Lanterns in Panji
[7] Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum, via Hangzhou Net. Museum Classroom: Decorative Lanterns