The annual Yuyuan Garden Lantern Festival will light up Shanghai on New Year's Day to mark the upcoming Year of the Snake, celebrating its 30th anniversary with a special exhibition, according to the organizers.

The 42-day event at Yuyuan Garden, a major downtown tourism destination, runs until Feb 12. It features a diverse collection of lanterns with the zodiac sign theme. Decorated with various animal, forest and mountain elements and elves, the lantern installations aim to present a lively and harmonious scene.

Like the previous edition, this year's show is inspired by Shan Hai Jing, or The Classic of Mountains and Seas, a major source of Chinese mythology that dates back over 2,000 years.

Since its launch in 1995, the lantern festival has become a landmark cultural Spring Festival celebration. Now in its 30th edition, it was inscribed on the National Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2008.

To mark the 30th anniversary, a unique exhibition on Chinese lantern art will open alongside the festival at Shiying Hall on the third floor of the Huabao Building at Yuyuan Shopping Mall.

The Beyond Lanterns exhibition is the first of its kind in Shanghai and will comprehensively showcase the history, folk culture, craftsmanship and the unique charm of Chinese lanterns.

In addition to 13 pieces of ancient lantern artifacts from museums and 10 nianhua (Chinese New Year paintings) kept at the Shanghai Library, it also gathers lantern masterpieces made by inheritors of intangible cultural heritage from eight cities, including Shanghai, Beijing, Chaozhou and Shantou in Guangdong province, Zigong in Sichuan province, and Quanzhou in Fujian province.

Meanwhile, the festival has expanded its presence nationwide with lantern shows in cities such as Sanya in Hainan province, Shenyang in Liaoning province and Shehong in Sichuan, which will also be lit up on New Year's Day, immersing visitors across China in the charm of the Yuyuan Garden lanterns.

"The Yuyuan Garden Festival is about showcasing our brilliant traditional Chinese culture. It used to be a folk activity in Shanghai but now represents the Chinese lantern culture and its crafts, which we hope the younger generation can know with more confidence," says Hu Junjie, vice-president of Yuyuan Inc.