THE LANTERN FESTIVAL

Last Saturday night, March 6^th, Phil and I headed 30 minutes south on the train to the city of Chiayi. This city was chosen to be the main site for Taiwan’s Lantern Festival this year. From what we know, many cities do things in celebration of this festival, but there’s only one city (a different one each year) that hosts “the main event”.

Technically, the Lantern Festival is held on the 15^th day of the lunar year (15 days after Chinese New Year), but we’ve noticed that many Lantern Festival events/celebrations started before that date and have continued after. We’ve asked people about the significance behind the event and the clearest answer we’ve gotten is simply, beauty. :)

For some reason, Phil and I were expecting the atmosphere to be peaceful and quaint. We were envisioning beautiful lanterns being displayed and lifted off. Well, our expectations were way off! (We have no idea where they came from anyway.) We were not disappointed, though, just surprised. The atmosphere would best be described as...carnival-like. And, we felt “Light Show” might have been a more accurate title for the event.

This year is the year of the tiger...my year! So, that’s why the main “lantern” is a tiger. For more information on the Chinese Zodiac, you can visit the link below.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac

Despite our crushed expectations, it was very fun event and really interesting! We are really happy we had the opportunity to go. If anyone is looking for an overdose on visual stimuli, this would definitely be an event you’d want to hit up at some point! :)

http://www.gio.gov.tw/info/festival_c/glue_e/glue.htm