"Sky Lantern Festival in Pingxi (平溪區), Taiwan
Every New Years Eve billions of people from around the world see the new year in by making a set of resolutions they have no intention of keeping.
Along with these wishes come a series of hopes, plans, dreams and aspirations. If I had to describe Taiwan’s Lantern Festival to someone – I’d do so by describing it as a kind of mish-mash of all these ideas.
Held fifteen days after Chinese New Year (which varies in date from year to year as it’s based on the Chinese lunar calendar), the Sky Lantern Festival in Pingxi ((平溪區) dates back to 1999 and allows participants to send their wishes into the sky and have them read by the gods.
The idea then being that the gods see your wishes and grant them.
Although the history of Sky Lanterns in Chinese culture dates back to the 3rd century, it is only in recent times that it has come to be the symbol of an annual festival in Pingxi.
Pingxi itself wasn’t much until the discovery of coal there in 1907. With the coal industry dying out over the last few decades, Pingxi has sought to re-invent itself as a tourist destination due to its scenic surroundings.
The town itself has a history with Sky Lanterns which explains the significance between the lanterns and Pingxi itself.
So the story goes, when settlers arrived from China’s Fujian province and established Pingxi as a town, the village found themselves frequently being attacked by bandits around Chinese New Year.
With each attack Pingxi’s villagers would run off into the mountains and wouldn’t return until the watchmen left behind launched sky lanterns into the air to signal the town was safe again.
In memory of those times and out of tradition, each Chinese New Year people from Pingxi would return to the town and release sky lanterns into the sky.
After the Taiwanese government turned this tradition into a cultural festival and pumped considerable resources into it, Pingxi now gets thousands of visitors each Lantern Festival with the festival enjoying popularity and success island-wide.
This year I was fortunate enough to make my way up to Pingxi and be a part of the action.
First and foremost, if you’re thinking of driving to Pingxi, either by car or scooter, forget about it.
A drive into the mountains will have you stopped around 5-10kms out of Pingxi and amongst a sea of cars, you’ll then have to find parking and take a shuttle bus into Pingxi.
These buses depart from Taipei Zoo and had we of known they were mandatory to gain access to Pingxi during the festival, we’d probably just have ridden the scooter to the zoo and caught a bus from there.
Price wise you’re looking at 30 TWD return from the shuttle bus stop we got onto, and 50 TWD return from Taipei Zoo. Buses start around 10am and run till midnight.
The bus ride took about 25 minutes into Pingxi and once we got there it soon became clear why they don’t let people drive into Pingxi;
Space is limited and the town is packed.
There are people everywhere and lanterns being let off all over the place. Sky lanterns themselves are made out of oiled paper held together by either a bamboo or thin metal frame, with the wick being either paper money or some other flammable material.
Some people’s lanterns went much higher than others so there seem to be varying degrees of “fuel” used to launch lanterns with.
Due to it being Lantern Festival and all, there are an abundance of lantern stalls around and lanterns will generally set you back $100-$200 TWD. The more expensive lanterns have patterns and designs on them, or are theme shaped (rockets were quite popular with little wings on the bottom).
With the lanterns being so cheap, setting off your own lantern is highly recommended – although make sure you do it properly!
I saw more than a few lanterns crash-land and set trees alight. Good thing it’s the middle of winter in Taiwan during Lantern Festival and more often than not the vegetation is saturated with moisture!
At various periodic times (three times an evening I believe) there is a stage area towards the north-east side of Pingxi where a ton of lanterns are set off together.
It’s literally a sky full of lanterns!
Other than lanterns there’s also your usual street food to eat:
but wading through the crowds can get a bit tedious:
This temple (I didn’t catch the name) was doubling as a lantern stall,
but also had some sort of talent show going on out the front:
No idea what that was about but there was some singing, dancing and KTV…
After setting off our own lantern, we found a local grandma and grandpa stall selling fireworks and found a good secluded area to let them off for a good half hour or so.
Finally, bellies full, lantern released and fireworks launched – we headed back to the bus area and that’s where the full impact of the crowd attending the lantern festival hits you.
While the seat line barely moved the standing room only queue was decent enough and we were only stuck in the queue for 10-15 minutes or so.
Pingxi is located just north of Taipei City up in the mountains. On a normal day you can just drive up there following route 106 but when the Lantern Festival is on you have to catch the shuttle bus from either Taipei Zoo or the freeway stop roughly halfway between Pingxi and Taipei.
Held in the first few months of the year (depending on when Chinese New Year falls), I’d highly recommend a visit to the Lantern Festival at least once if you find yourself in Taiwan when it’s on.
Even when it’s not on, lanterns are readily available for purchase in Pingxi all year round so it’s something you can do yourself outside of the festival.
That said, there’s nothing quite like the experience of looking up and seeing hundreds of lanterns flying off into the starless night…
February 13th, 2012 at 7:01 pm yi(Quote)
any street food? what traditional food do you eat during the lantern fest?
February 13th, 2012 at 10:16 pm Whatthehell(Quote)
There’s a lot of syung chung kicking about the lantern festival along with the other usual suspects, fried chou dofu, squid balls etc.
February 14th, 2012 at 11:46 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
I don’t think there’s a traditional food. We had some nice “Dubai Rolls” which were more like Indian food. Think tikka masala chicken in a roll, it was quite nice.
Other than that there’s the usual nightmarket stuff there, fried everything, some noodle stalls, stinky tofu etc. etc.