Lighting the way to a brighter future

After its traditional salt-extraction industry died out, a small town in Southwest China set its sights on becoming the world capital for Chinese lanterns. Li Yang reports from Zigong, Sichuan province.

'My grandpa sneers at today's lanterns. When he saw the annual lantern show in Zigong three years ago, he blurted out: 'Do you call those things lanterns?' " Yang Shiping said, with a laugh.

Yang is a third-generation lantern maker in Zigong, a city in the southwestern province of Sichuan. Known nationally as the "salt city", Zigong was a center of salt extraction for more than 2,000 years. Once, it supplied one-third of all the salt consumed in China, before cheaper sea and lake salts became more popular.