Buildings to glow red for Spring Festival

To mark the first Spring Festival since UNESCO listed the celebration on its inventory of World Cultural Heritage, the municipality of Shanghai has invited building managers worldwide to light up their towers and skyscrapers in Chinese red.

On Tuesday, the day before Chinese New Year, two iconic landmarks, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and Shanghai Tower, took the lead in lighting up in Chinese red.

In collaboration with the skyscraper cluster in Lujiazui, Pudong New Area, the two landmarks will glow red until Feb 4.

The initiative has received active responses from the World Federation of Great Towers, or WFGT, and the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, or CTBUH.

Skyscrapers and landmark buildings in locations including New York, Chicago, and Dallas in the United States, Vancouver in Canada, Singapore, Tokyo in Japan, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Barcelona in Spain, and Bucharest in Romania will take part.

The iconic Marina Bay Sands in Singapore lit up in Chinese red on Monday and will continue to do so until the Lantern Festival on Feb 12.

On Tuesday night, Tokyo Tower also put on a red coat, with 2025 balloons featuring Chinese pandas and Japanese anime characters also released to ascend into the sky to symbolize the global community's hopeful expectations for the new year.