I was really looking forward to the weekend. Last year I remembered seeing pictures of the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival in Taiwan (look it up on YouTube, Flickr, or others for even better pictures than I have here). There is a similar festival in Thailand—but this was my chance for a nice weekend trip with my girlfriend while having a chance to see a cool event.
We took the train to a small town nearby Pingxi then we headed up to another hillside town called Jiufen. That place has some great food on their old style street. They have some grilled mushrooms that are absolutely to die for.
From there we headed out to the festival—sort of. We got to the train station to head toward Pingxi and found it was crowded beyond belief. There were swarms of people squeezing onto the trains. No problem though, they had extra trains running on the line that day and it wasn’t supposed to be too long of a trip. We made it through a few stations squeezed into the train with hundreds of our best friends so tight that we almost didn’t need to hold onto things. Then the train just completely stopped at one station for 20 minutes and just waited.
Finally, it started again only to stop again and wait at the next station. The problem was the tracks were old so only one track could be used so each train had to wait for the train ahead of it to complete its pass before it could proceed. Thankfully we found this out from a nice guy who we had been chatting with on the train so together with him and his mom we got off and walked to a nearby bus which took us most of the way there.
Pingxi was a rush of activity and was completely packed with people. There were innumerable food stalls and stalls selling lanterns. The lanterns were made of sort of a rice paper and stood about 5 feet tall. The Taiwanese “ghost money” was placed in a metal holder attached to the wooden ring at the bottom and lit. The hot air would fill the lantern and it would take off.
The lanterns are related to Chinese New Year in that people write their hopes or wishes on them then watch as those wishes are carried into the heavens. The lanterns, like smoke signals, also served the practical purpose of communicating in the rough and steep terrain of Northern Taiwan.
There really isn’t too much more I can say about the lanterns. The festival was beyond amazing and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The hundreds of lanterns floating into the sky in unison (around the main ceremony, other places were haphazard) was unbelievable to watch.
That said, it was also really fun to watch people screw up away from the main ceremony. There was a strong breeze so some of the lanterns would take off and crash into trees or telephone poles while the paper was still burning. When one went up the whole crowd would breathlessly watch and cheer if the lantern made it past the obstacles. But as cool as it was for us I could only imagine the people downwind, who 3 times a year had to watch out for smoldering orbs falling from the sky.
On the way back we saw a pretty wicked fight. Still that was nothing compared to the crush of people trying to get on the trains and get out. But get out we did.
The following day was much colder and there was a light rain that was coming down so we decided to go to the Gold Museum near Jiufen before heading home. They had 220kg block of gold that you could touch
Overall this trip was definitely the coolest one I have been on in Taiwan.
We took the train to a small town nearby Pingxi then we headed up to another hillside town called Jiufen. That place has some great food on their old style street. They have some grilled mushrooms that are absolutely to die for.
From there we headed out to the festival—sort of. We got to the train station to head toward Pingxi and found it was crowded beyond belief. There were swarms of people squeezing onto the trains. No problem though, they had extra trains running on the line that day and it wasn’t supposed to be too long of a trip. We made it through a few stations squeezed into the train with hundreds of our best friends so tight that we almost didn’t need to hold onto things. Then the train just completely stopped at one station for 20 minutes and just waited.
Finally, it started again only to stop again and wait at the next station. The problem was the tracks were old so only one track could be used so each train had to wait for the train ahead of it to complete its pass before it could proceed. Thankfully we found this out from a nice guy who we had been chatting with on the train so together with him and his mom we got off and walked to a nearby bus which took us most of the way there.
Pingxi was a rush of activity and was completely packed with people. There were innumerable food stalls and stalls selling lanterns. The lanterns were made of sort of a rice paper and stood about 5 feet tall. The Taiwanese “ghost money” was placed in a metal holder attached to the wooden ring at the bottom and lit. The hot air would fill the lantern and it would take off.
The lanterns are related to Chinese New Year in that people write their hopes or wishes on them then watch as those wishes are carried into the heavens. The lanterns, like smoke signals, also served the practical purpose of communicating in the rough and steep terrain of Northern Taiwan.
There really isn’t too much more I can say about the lanterns. The festival was beyond amazing and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. The hundreds of lanterns floating into the sky in unison (around the main ceremony, other places were haphazard) was unbelievable to watch.
That said, it was also really fun to watch people screw up away from the main ceremony. There was a strong breeze so some of the lanterns would take off and crash into trees or telephone poles while the paper was still burning. When one went up the whole crowd would breathlessly watch and cheer if the lantern made it past the obstacles. But as cool as it was for us I could only imagine the people downwind, who 3 times a year had to watch out for smoldering orbs falling from the sky.
On the way back we saw a pretty wicked fight. Still that was nothing compared to the crush of people trying to get on the trains and get out. But get out we did.
The following day was much colder and there was a light rain that was coming down so we decided to go to the Gold Museum near Jiufen before heading home. They had 220kg block of gold that you could touch
Overall this trip was definitely the coolest one I have been on in Taiwan.
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