Large-than-life installations of Terracotta Warriors and their horses will light up a public park and a square in Colombia's capital Bogota every night from March 11-27, the seventh time these colorful lanterns will go abroad, and mark the opening of the 2016 China-Latin America and Caribbean Year of Culture Exchanges.

All together, there are 80 warrior-inspired installations and two life-size horses. They glow at night in red, blue, yellow, white and pink. The warrior-shaped lanterns have different facial expressions, a take-off on the real Terracotta Warriors unearthed in 1974 in Northwest China's city of Xi'an.

"Colombia is the farthest country our installations have been. They have always been warmly welcomed and loved when they were shown in different countries in the past few years," says Xu Wei, the director of the team that makes the lanterns in Beijing.

Since 2012, the lanterns have been taken to Britain, Australia, Finland, the Czech Republic, Croatia and Estonia.

Xu says the team get invitations from so many nations that they do not have enough lanterns to display. His team has made about 300 such lanterns so far.

The production team, made up of artists and craftsmen, first created the lanterns for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The lanterns have an iron structure, rainproof attire and clay heads.

"If the heads were made of the same material as the clothes, the warrior-inspired lanterns would have looked like bank robbers when the lanterns were turned on," says Xu, adding that the team had experimented a lot before deciding to make clay heads for the lanterns.

Every time they are to be shown overseas, the lanterns get new attire to withstand rain and snow.

The warrior-inspired pieces are made using traditional Beijing-style craft skills, says Xu.

Besides drawing inspiration from the warriors found in Emperor Qin's tomb, the new warriors are also portrayed as women and children, in a bid to make the installations look more like a family instead of an army, says Xu.

The lanterns attract lots of visitors when they're shown overseas. People take photos with them, children play around them and some even climb onto the horse-shaped lanterns, says Xia Nan, designer of the installations.

Xia says people in different countries see the installations differently.

"The British look at the lanterns as artworks, quietly watching from a distance.

The Australians stand close and want to interact with these warrior-shaped lanterns," says Xia, who has observed people's reactions to the installations in different countries.

The lantern show is just one of a series of exhibitions, performances and cultural events that China, Latin America and the Caribbean will hold this year as part of the year of culture exchanges between China and Latin America.

The exchanges involve about 30 nations in the area.

Later this year, events including contemporary Chinese art, porcelain art, architecture exhibitions and a presentation of intangible heritage of ethnic groups from China will be held in Latin American countries, including Argentina, Mexico, Cuba and Ecuador.

(China Daily 03/08/2016 page18)