元宵節

Taipei Lantern Festival (2017年臺北燈節)

The Lantern Festival (元宵節) is a traditional festival which is celebrated on the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year and its celebration marks the culmination of the traditional Spring Festival celebrations. 

The festival is one that is steeped in tradition and historically featured simple round red lanterns which symbolized a ‘new start’ for the year as well as good fortune as red is an auspicious colour in Chinese culture. 

The simplicity of the small red lanterns that were put on display during Lantern Festival are something that became synonymous with Chinese culture over time while the elaborate lanterns we see today were mostly reserved for the emperor.  

These days things are a lot different and the lanterns you’ll find at the various lantern festivals throughout the world come in all shapes and sizes and can often be very complex in design.

The Lantern Festival in Taiwan is an important celebration with events being held in every city and county in the country as well as a designated national Lantern Festival which is being held in Yunlin this year. 

2017 Taiwan Lantern Festival Website: English | 中文

The Taipei Lantern Festival traditionally features lanterns created by students who took part in a lantern-creation contest as well as professionally-made lanterns which all focus on the themes corresponding to the Chinese zodiac. 

The 2017 Taipei Lantern festival is taking place between February 4th and 17th. This years incarnation boasts both traditional lanterns but also showcases Taiwan’s high-tech prowess using the latest technology for light projection and illumination which will be displayed on the walls of historic sites and buildings.  

While the Taipei Lantern Festival traditionally focuses on the display of “lanterns”, this one which has the theme “West Side Story, Taipei Glory” focuses on the history of the area between the Northern (北門) and Western gates (西門) of the city.

The festival is broken up into several different themed areas based on either chickens or eggs and there are also several different stages for performances, parades, children’s activities and light shows. 

The event organizers boast that this years Lantern Festival is a break with tradition and they hope that it will allow visitors to enjoy the historic commercial districts with the celebrations being held on the streets. 

In the past, the Lantern Festival would be held at Liberty Square (自由廣場), Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (國父紀念堂) or the Taipei Expo Park (花博公園) all of which have large open areas that can accommodate large crowds. 

This year the city government threw all of that out the window and planned for the festival to take place in the heart of the already busy Ximen Shopping District (西門町商圈). Instead of a large open space the organizers have decided to fill three meter wide sidewalks with tens of thousands of people.

Transportation to the Lantern Festival is quite convenient - You can access the festival from either the Ximen MRT station (西門捷運站) or from Taipei Main Station (台北車站).

A large crowd wondering where all the lanterns are... 

The issue is that with the amount of people who go to the annual festival, the amount of congestion makes it almost unbearable, especially when you have to cross large streets to visit the different sections. 

In another break with tradition, the lanterns which the festival is dedicated to are actually few and far between and the city has decided to focus on impressive light shows. 

While the Lantern Festival has only been on for a few days, the media and the internet have exploded with criticism of not only the location of the venue but the focus on light shows rather than lanterns. The festival has been compared to Taipei’s (somewhat) failed attempt at holding a “Nuit Blanche” (白晝之夜) art festival last October.

The most universally criticized aspect of this years Lantern Festival is the “lantern” that represents Lin Mo Niang (林默娘), the woman who is more popularly known in Taiwan as the Goddess Mazu (媽祖). The eight meter high image of the goddess has been designed to look like a Japanese cartoon and has ignited a lot of criticism of not only the design but the “dead-looking eyes” of the goddess who is known as Taiwan’s protector deity. 

News Link: 台北燈節林默娘長這樣 網友驚:媽祖還是鬼娃?

As the Lantern Festival was spread out over a large area and because there were far too many people and not enough to see, I didn't spend a whole lot of time taking photos this year. I made sure to visit the area where there were lanterns made by young Taiwanese students and checked out some of the light shows, but I didn't stick around for any of the performances or the parades. I didn't get many photos of the chickens or the eggs, but I think the lanterns created by Taiwan's young students were the highlight of the festival.  

As usual the city government and the organizers of the festival put a lot of work into organizing the festival and planning fun and interesting events for the people who attend. The location and the lack of lanterns however make this years event somewhat disappointing but there is always something to see and the experience of visiting Taipei's lantern festival is always an interesting one. The festival will go on for the next ten days, so if you’re in Taipei and have free time, head over to check it out. 

2017 Taipei Lantern Festival Website: English | 中文 


Taiwan Lantern Festival (2016年臺灣燈會)

The Spring Festival (春節) is a month-long festival which begins with the Lunar New Year festivities and ends with the Lantern Festival. In Taiwan, the Lantern Festival (元宵節) is celebrated in a few different ways - The most well-known of all the festivities is the Pingxi Sky Lantern festival (平溪天燈節) just outside of Taipei and the most intense being the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival (鹽水蜂炮) in Tainan county.

The Sky Lantern festival is a world-renowned festival and rated by several travel sites and news organizations as a must-visit bucket-list type of festival. I've gone to the Sky Lantern festival a few times and while it is quite beautiful, I do have my reservations about it and the planning that goes into it.

The Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival on the other hand is a festival that I'd love to take part in but tend to be quite apprehensive about it because I'm not a big fan of firecrackers being lit anywhere close to me. Having them exploding in every direction around me would be extremely stressful and I guess I'll add it to my own bucket-list as a 'conquering your fears' kind of thing.

Apart from these two festivals, cities and counties in Taiwan put on a their own Lantern Festivals with a national festival that alternates locations year-by-year. The Taipei Lantern Festival (台北燈會) is usually held at the Flora-Expo park (花博公園) near the Yuanshan MRT station (圓山捷運站) and is always a good time. The buzz this year though is that the Lanterns aren't very good and the giant monkey lantern seems to be the laughing stock of the Internet community. I'll probably visit in the next few days just to see and I'll likely make a post about it as well.

The Universe Tower. This thing is l33t!

This year the Taiwan Lantern Festival (臺灣燈會) is being held in Taoyuan from February 22nd to March 6th and is near my home which means the national festival is much more accessible to me than it has been in years past. The national festival is always much grander in scale than all of the smaller festivals and when you visit the festival you can expect to see lanterns of all shapes and sizes as well as spectacular fireworks shows and performances by local celebrities.

The national festival also attracts quite a few more people than the smaller festivals and the county government here estimates that over twelve million people will visit this year making it important for tourism in Taoyuan county.

Religion Section

The festival is being held in Zhongli (中壢) near the Taoyuan High Speed Rail Station (桃園高鐵站) which makes it extremely convenient for visitors coming from outside of the county to attend with high speed trains from various cities and free shuttle bus services from all the local train and bus stations. You don't need to drive a car to get to the festival and it's a much better idea to rely on Taiwan's excellent public transport rather than sitting in a traffic jam and paying for parking.

Getting to the Lantern Festival: English | 中文 | 日本語

 

The Lantern Festival this year is huge - It is split into several different themed sections and is spread out over a wide area - I arrived just after 6:00pm and by 10:00pm, the time it was about to close, I still hadn't seen everything that was on display. You might feel a bit overwhelmed by the amount of lanterns on display and the different sections available, so I'll share some of my impressions of the different sections to give you a better idea of what not to miss!

The theme of the festival this year is "Golden Monkey Offering Peaches" (金猴獻桃) which sounds quite clever in Mandarin, but probably not so much in English. The meaning behind it is simple: This is the year of the "Golden Monkey" (金猴) and the festival is being held in Taoyuan (桃園) which translates as "peach garden" so the Golden Monkey is offering Taoyuan peaches to the rest of the country which can be interpreted as a way for Taoyuan to showcase itself and the vibrant culture here.

As mentioned above, the festival is split into six different sections which are: Technology World (科技世界燈區), Religious Blessings (宗教燈區), Fairytale Dream Factory (童話夢工廠燈區), Taoyuan Legend (桃園故事燈區), New Utopia (新桃花源燈區), an International Lantern section (多元交流燈區) and the main display area (台灣燈會主燈) being the biggest and most important.

The section that you absolutely have to visit is the main display area (台灣燈會主燈) - This is the area where you will see the most lanterns as well as what organizers boast as history's largest lantern, the 26 meter tall Monkey King - an important character from the 16th century book "Journey to the West" (西遊記) - that puts on an interesting light show every half hour.

The monkeys you will see in your nightmares.

The technology section is pretty cool, but there aren't many lanterns and it is more of a celebration of Taiwan's technological and design prowess. The coolest part of the technology section is the Universe Tower which is a starry sky made of glass with lights that are constantly changing colours.

The other interesting part of the technology section is a covered pavilion of sorts that looks like it has a lot of white balloons on the roof. There are touch-screen computers connected to a pole and will take your picture and put it on one of the balloons for a short period of time. It is pretty cool and if you want to use it, you may have to wait in line for a little while if you're visiting on a busy day. 

I didn't spend much time in the children's section because it seemed to me like it was just a bunch of advertisements posing as lanterns and was probably just a section that was put up to make the corporate sponsors of the event happy.

The international section was a long walk away from the other sections and had some lanterns from Hong Kong and Macau. There was also a section set up nearby showcasing Taiwanese Indigenous culture with lanterns dedicated to each of Taiwan's recognized Indigenous groups as well as life sized lanterns of a person from each tribe wearing their traditional attire. 

The religion section irritated me a bit, not because the lanterns sucked (some of them were really cool), but because some of the religious people that were very eager to "have a talk" with the people browsing the sections. Each time I passed by a temple or area set up by a specific religious group they attempt to call me over to try make small talk and then want me to do something.

The worst of all of them however had to be the Christians who figured that because I was a white guy (just like Jesus) I must be a Christian. They followed me around a bit and no matter how much I ignored them they kept trying. I felt like I had to quickly escape the religion section, which sucked because there were some pretty cool lanterns inside.

My personal favourite lanterns

I didn't have enough time to visit the New Utopia or the Fairytale Dream factory, but I kind of regret not visiting the New Utopia as it seems the section had some lanterns on the water and they would have made for some nice photos.

The festival can be a bit intimidating with it sheer size and if you are visiting on a busy day, then I highly doubt you'll be able to see as much as I was able to. 

Unfortunately when the festival started, the weather didn't really cooperate and the crowds weren't as large as what was originally expected. This changed over the weekend with nicer weather and crowds of people numbering in the hundreds of thousands. The weather for the next few days seems like it is going to be quite nice, so I hope a lot of people take the time to come over to Taoyuan to enjoy the Lantern Festival and of course all of the good food and fun that Taoyuan has to offer.

Happy Lantern Festival Taiwan!

I'm going to visit the Taipei Lantern Festival in a few days to check out what Taiwan's 'greatest' city has prepared. I also want to see just how ugly the giant monkey is as it has become quite infamous online over the past few weeks!

I've uploaded quite a few photos for this post and you're welcome to browse through the gallery below - If you want to see them in a more convenient way, click the link for my Flickr below to see them all on a single page with larger sizes.  

I'll end by wishing everyone a Happy Lantern Festival (祝大家元宵節快樂) and especially for all my friends and followers here in Taiwan - let's hope that the year of the Golden Monkey is a much safer and prosperous one for this beautiful little country than last year! 

2016 Taiwan Lantern Festival - English | 中文


Taoyuan Lantern Festival (桃園燈會)

A rainy first night for the Taoyuan Lantern Festival

Tonight almost every family in Taiwan will eat a bowl of steaming hot rice balls (湯圓) and that will mark the fifteenth day of celebrations and the end of the Lunar New Year. Lantern Festivals however will still be on around the country at least for the next three or so days until the end of the week. 

The National Lantern Festival in Taichung is having record numbers of visitors and its estimated that more than eight million people will visit before the end of the week and the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival is also wrapping up its festivities tonight with higher numbers of visitors than years past. 

The Lonely Lanterns

Taoyuan officially opened its Lantern Festival yesterday and as I've already been to the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival and the Taipei Lantern Festival last week, I thought I'd pay the Lantern Festival near my home a visit as I don't think I'll be brave enough to brave the crowds in Taichung. 

The city government has had advertisements up all over the place for past few weeks reminding people about the Lantern Festival and I read online that the new mayor of Taoyuan said that our Lantern Festival has the most "style" (最有特色) of all the festivals in the country - So I was generally pretty interested in seeing what they were going to pull off. Taoyuan county's Lantern Festival is traditionally held in a different area of the county every year and in past years I've been impressed with what they've done even though it doesn't have the scale of what Taipei does.  

Hakka Lanterns

As a precursor to what I'm about to write,  I feel like I should remind everyone that when I blog about Taiwan, I usually try my best to spin things in a positive light because I love this country and I like to promote it through my photography as much as possible. With that in mind, I'm not going to pull my punches on this one.  

The 2015 Taoyuan Lantern Festival is the WORST I've seen in my decade of living in this country. I'm not sure what "style" the mayor was referring to, but it seems like they put almost no effort into this event and its kind of embarrassing if people come to the festival expecting to actually see lanterns - which should be the primary focus of a lantern festival - right? 

While walking through the grounds I overheard several people saying: "That's it? This is pathetic" (就這樣?好誇張) which more or less mirrored my own sentiment about the festival.

Colourful Hakka Lanterns

Why was this? After spending almost half an hour looking for a place to park the car, you only needed to spend only about 10 seconds to see ALL of the lanterns - which I may unfairly compare to Taipei's Lantern Festival which needed well over an hour to see all of the lanterns.  

There were really only two large lanterns and both were placed by corporate sponsors. The rest of the lanterns were smaller lanterns paying homage to Longtan's Hakka heritage and while they were beautiful and colourful, there weren't that many of them.

The county seems like it spent more money on fireworks than they did on lanterns, so if you plan on going to the festival in the next few days, make sure you arrive before they set off the fireworks to make your trip worthwhile. 

Water Dance (水舞秀) 

The main focus of the event, and the "style" the mayor was likely referring to was the Water Dance (水舞秀) performance that takes place every half hour. Basically you have a bunch of fountains set up in the lake and there is a choreographed light and music performance for 5 or so minutes. I didn't have much interest in the Water Dance as they had the exact same performance during last summer's Dragonboat Festival (端午節) at the same venue. I also didn't really understand the correlation between the Water Dance and Lantern Festival other than some lights. 

I may be accused of being a traditionalist, but I think the focus of any Lantern Festival should be the Lanterns shouldn't it?

Do you think I'm being too picky?

Let me know. 


I'm not sure if he was threatening me or not. 

I think this shot was probably the most interesting shot I got the entire night. I was trying to take some street shots of some of the vendors at the festival and this guy held up the links of sausage and started cutting them while looking at me. I took that as an indication that he didn't want any pictures! 

Despite my disappointment in the Taoyuan Lantern Festival, I've been busy with the other festivals and the Lunar New Year as a whole and I'm extremely backed up with processing photos and blogs to write! 

Hope everyone had a good New Year and Happy Lantern Festival! 

元宵快樂!

Gallery (Click on the picture to enlarge)