fff|ggg|forest_hills_lantern_festival/P1030776|Lanterns|ggg|fff

I recently read an ***entry on Exploit Boston|http://www.exploitboston.com/archives/2005/07/annual_lantern.php*** about the ***Forest Hills Cemetery|http://www.foresthillstrust.org/***’s Lantern Festival. Becky and I took the Orange Line out to Forest Hills on Thursday night to attend. Though Exploit Boston links to a Wikipedia entry on the Chinese ***Lantern Festival|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantern_festival***, the Forest Hills event was actually closer to the Japanese ***Bon Festival|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Festival***, both in calendar date and content. Overall, however, the festival was a amalgamation of various Asian traditions, with some local cultural flavor thrown in.

This was the first time either of us had been to Forest Hills, and it was quite a lovely experience. The Cemetery grounds are beautiful, with sprawling grassy plots, meandering pathways, and impressive sculptures and architecture. It was also the first time I had visited ***Jamaica Plain|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaica_Plain%2C_Boston%2C_Massachusetts*** and the first time I had traveled out on the Orange Line further than Back Bay.

The festival itself had a great family atmosphere. There were many young families and lots of children running around. People had brought along picnic dinners and blankets and chairs, and families and friends milled around and chatted throughtout the evening. (Note to self for next time: bring friends and picnic.)

There was a program of performance art taking place, including a traditional Bon Festival dance, performances from the Chu Ling dance academy, the ***VariAsians|http://www.variasians.com/variasians/index.html*** a cappella ensemble, and Tsuji Daiko, Japanese samurai drummers. Festival-goers could also purchase the materials to make their own paper lanterns, which would be inscribed with Japanese or Chinese characters, and could then be decorated with messages of memory for lost loved ones. Becky and I were too cheap to purchase our own, but we did enjoy looking at the creations other people had made.

After the performance, there was a ceremony to send off the lanterns, with bagpipe music (an odd choice, I thought, given that the ceremony was largely Asian in its influences). There was a bit of wind, which kept pushing the lanterns back to the shore, but industrious celebrants used their hands and sticks to push them back out. The lanterns floating on the water at dusk made for quite a beautiful scene.

To see it for yourself, check out ***our gallery of the event|http://gallery.prwdot.org/forest_hills_lantern_festival***.