Besides enjoying holiday lights around town and eating tasty German fare at the Vancouver Christmas Market, there’s a new attraction opening to the public today that you can check out over the winter season.

The highly anticipated Chinese Lantern Festival is making its Canadian debut today at the Pacific National Exhibition (entrance at the corner of Renfrew and Hastings Street) through January 21, 2018.

Present by Art Show China Inc. (the Canadian division of Sichuan Tianyu Culture Communication Co. Ltd.), this large-scale attraction will feature everything from 200-feet illuminated lanterns to festival foods, and a marketplace to children’s activities.

Visitors will be treated to colourful sights that showcase pandas, a Chinese pagoda, a gigantic dragon, Confucius and his disciples, as well as Santa and his reindeer.

Chinese lanterns are culturally significant in China; lantern festivals started during the Han Dynasty, which was about 2,000 years ago. For centuries, lanterns festivals have been lit on the fifteenth day of the first month in the Chinese calendar to pray for a good harvest, and to gain favor of Taiyi, god of heaven.

In addition to the lantern displays, festival-goers will also be able to watch nightly performances in the PNE Amphitheatre. The show will feature face-changing, acrobatics, plate spinners, folk dance, jar-balancing, and erhu (a Chinese two-stringed fiddle).

Tickets ($13.50 to $55.00) are available online. The Chinese Lantern Festival runs daily (except Christmas Day) on Friday and Saturday (5 to 11 p.m.) and Sunday to Thursday (5 to 10 p.m.).

 Scroll through the photos below for a sneak peek of the beautiful lantern displays.