The flower basket lantern dance was originally called "string lanterns", named after the lanterns and flower baskets. It is usually used in the temple fairs during the Lantern Festival. It is mainly popular in Xinbang Town, Songjiang District, and has been known as the "Folk Song Lantern Township" in history. Every village in the town has a string of lanterns. During the Lantern Festival, every village organizes a lantern team. Generally, on the first night, they will dance with lanterns in the temple. The fire for lighting the lanterns must be invited from the temple, and then they will enter the village and visit each house. The villagers will cook and prepare wine, invite relatives and friends to watch and taste, and prepare "red paper bags" to give to the lantern team. From the second night, they will go to other villages to dance with each other in the order of invitations. Every night, with the sound of gongs and drums, the horses and flower baskets will light up, the lights in the village will flicker, appear and disappear, colorful, the atmosphere will be warm, and the scene will be spectacular. The whole activity will last until the end of the month before the lanterns are closed. In the early days of the flower basket lantern dance, there were only 4 horses and 4 flower baskets. The lantern team wore costumes and played roles in the plays such as "Water Margin", "Legend of the White Snake" and "Lü Chunyang's Three Plays with White Peony". Later, folk artists continued to enrich the team, and there were 6 horses and 6 flower baskets, 8 horses and 8 flower baskets, and even 2 lantern teams mixed together. In order to facilitate the orderly formation change, 8 large yellow silk umbrellas, 8 umbrella lantern women wearing colorful clothes, and 8 lantern women wearing colorful clothes and holding flower baskets were added. The female roles in the lantern team were all dressed by men. In terms of performance form, at first, various formations and titles were changed only by borrowing the number of "-". Later, 31 patterns such as "being beaten", "bowl rack", "double grinding", "inside road city", "outside road city", "wild cat cave", "big victory", "six lumps", "beating back dragon", "inlaid with treasure Ruyi", and "meeting on the broken bridge" were interspersed. The local folk rhyme describes it as "a wild cat cave inlaid with jewels, an octagonal line for a great victory, the bowl rack is slapped back to the empty space, the broken bridge meets the double grinding wheel, the silver goose of heaven and earth is the supreme treasure, and the plum blossom long three plus a bench". The flower basket and horse lantern dance usually lights up in the evening. The lantern team holds flower baskets, colorful horses, water baskets, bowls, medicine boxes, yellow silk umbrellas and other props, lights small red candles, and constantly changes the formation and rhythm to the fast and slow accompaniment of the folk percussion "seven-character gong".