While the annual lantern show at Yu Garden, a historical tourist site in downtown Shanghai, has been held since 1995 to usher in Spring Festival, this will be the first year that the venue is leveraging artificial intelligence for the event.

Named Tmall Genie and developed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, AI at the garden has also made the job of technicians easier.

In the past, technicians had to manually switch on the extensive lighting installations across the garden, but thanks to Tmall Genie, only one person is required to do the job this year.

This person doesn't even need to press a button－he or she can simply utter the command.

With a simple command, a 9-meter-high lantern in the shape of a mouse begins beaming in the central square. Following this, images of lions on the facade of Hefeng Mansion nearby become animated and the neon signs of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse flicker above the stone alley where crowds wait in a line to buy traditional Shanghai snacks and souvenirs.

"We use a smart speaker to turn on all the light installations. It's like a magic spell. It's one of the new things we've tried this year," says Sun Jingjing, a light show controller who came up with the idea of using AI.

"The idea of controlling the light show with a smart speaker came to me one night when I asked the system to turn off the light (in her home) as it was too cold to get out of bed," she explains.

The 27-year-old first told her general manager Xu Chong about the idea. The pair then contacted Alibaba before working with its Tmall Genie team to set up the system required to manage the lantern show.

"It's a lot of engineering work but it's worth it as we want to attract more young people to the festival this year," says Xu.

Besides smart controls, projection mapping technology is also being used for the first time at this year's lantern show. This new technology has been used to animate a large lantern installation on a wall of Hefeng Mansion. Themed after the Belt and Road Initiative, the long-scroll lantern features images of historical sites such as the Wild Goose Pagoda in Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi province and the Colosseum in Rome, Italy, which are the start and end of the ancient trade route.

When turned on, the 3D projectors will first project a short animation on the wall. The entire installation is then lit up as the cartoon characters in the projection "jump" into the lantern.

To make this installation a reality, Wan Songtao, the principal designer of the light show, worked with members of Tsinghua University's Academy of Arts and Design. His role involved adjusting the colors and materials to achieve an ideal reflection for the projection.

"I was so excited to see my lantern come to life during the first lighting test," says Wan, who was born in a lantern-making family and has been in this trade for 40 years.

"The technology breathes new life into a tradition that has been around for centuries," he adds.

Another futuristic light installation featured at this year's festival is the one located on the surface of the central pond under the popular zigzag bridge in the garden. Consisting of some 3,000 polarized plastic cut-outs of fish, the light installation was also designed by a team from Tsinghua University's Academy of Arts and Design.

Wang Zhigang, the leader of the team, says the design was inspired by how water is a symbol of culture in water towns on the Yangtze River delta, and how the "fish" is pronounced the same way as "abundance" in Chinese.

According to Wang, the team spent almost six months designing, crafting and setting up this lighting installation, which will be showcased throughout the year.

As 2020 is the Year of the Rat in the Chinese zodiac, the animal has been featured in a variety of lanterns, with some taking the form of Disney mice.

Lanterns featuring some of China's most notable projects, such as the 55-kilometer Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the country's first passenger jet C919 and the Fuxing high-speed train, will also be displayed during the show.

The lantern show at Yu Garden will last through Feb 11. Admission to the event is free, except between Feb 7 and 11 when tickets will cost 50 yuan ($7.2) for adults and 30 yuan for children. The fee will be raised by another 20 yuan on the day of Lantern Festival on Feb 8.