Lantern Festival- Tangled For Real!!

          On the fifteenth day of Chinese New Year, marking the end of the festivities, is the Lantern Festival.  This has been my favorite holiday experience yet in Taiwan. Rice dumplings, a sweet glutinous rice ball brewed in a soup, are eaten this day. Candles are lit outside houses as a way to guide wayward spirits home. 

            To celebrate the lantern festival we got to do two fun activities: see the light displays around Taipei, and go to Pingxi to light floating lanterns.

            I will start with the most exciting: Floating Lanterns.  Pingxi is a little mining town about an hour and a half outside of Taipei (without lots of traffic).  Going to Pingxi to light the lanterns is extremely popular and it can be a crazy experience.  We were warned that doing this excursion alone can be quite a horrendous experience to travel back and forth so we decided to do it with the AIT group that organized a chartered bus and would head down early afternoon and come back late that night.  We weren't really sure what to expect so we asked some friends to watch Elli for the day knowing that the long traveling time might be more than she could handle. 

Our day trip started off in the town right next to Pingxi, where people wrote their wishes for the new year on bamboo sticks and hung them everywhere.  This town wasn't anything special but we had to get near Pingxi early because of all the traffic, and it was a way to pass the time.

The scenery was picturesque in most ways, but the town was a little underwhelming.

So many Asians were taking pictures on the railroad tracks.  And not just one or two pictures.  TONS OF PICTURES. Pictures next to the fence, next to the polls, walking on the tracks, sitting on the tracks, next to the old beat up train, more walking on the tracks.... I kept thinking, "Am I missing something?" Those Asians and their cameras ... out of control!

We walked along a small trail up the hill behind the train tracks and saw some clay mining models along the cliff.  Cooler looking in the pic than it was in person to be honest. And since it doesn't look that cool even in the picture...

                                    
All along the trail we saw remnants of the sky lanterns that everyone sets off.  Sadly, these little towns here don't have any cleaning crew set up to clear away all the lantern debri after it lands, and as we know what goes up must come down.  The sky lantern lighting tourists are the main source of income for these towns so there is no way they are stopping it though.

Look at all the dots of colors in the surrounding hillside: all sky lanterns.  And we are still about 20 minutes outside of Pingxi.  It got worse as we got closer.

Some of the ruins for this mining town were actually pretty cool with the way that nature just took back what wasn't being used anymore.  My favorite is the tree to the right whose roots just latched on to the side of the wall.  This actually looked even cooler in person.

Now the fun begins.  Here we are writing our wishes for the new year on our own lanterns.  Todd and I each got one.  Sienna shared with me.  I think I wrote about our happiness in our family, health, success in work, strength in our faith, and being able to share the gospel with others.  

Todd wrote "Todd winning at everything" on his lantern. :)

At the main lighting area, hoards of people were coming in and out.  Our group had to go to a special waiting area until they were ready for us to set off our lanterns.  The President of Taiwan was going to be in attendance later so security was pretty strict.  People who had seats to watch the show had been there since dawn or the night before.

Here is the area they have set up for the lighting of the lanterns.  Each person in a pink hat was assigned one family to help with their lantern.  There would be 100 lanterns sent off at a time.  I think they said there were like 15 groups of 100 being sent off that night.  We were in the first group.

Sun is setting, almost time to set off our lanterns (you can see a couple black specks of other lanterns already sent off).

We quickly jotted down some things on this lantern.  We were even on TV briefly when a local TV channel asked us to be there special family to say what we had written on our lantern.  Kind of fun! 

Setting off the lanterns!!! Yay! I was trying to keep Sienna happy, since the TV crew was filming us and take pictures so I didn't get everything.  I feel like if we ever do this again, I won't take pictures though because I missed some of the moment by taking pictures rather than just enjoying it.  It was still incredibly awesome though, and definitely had the Tangled quality magic! A little smoky though!

Back at the restaurant, the home base for our other lanterns we wrote on earlier.  We sent these off one by one and got to enjoy the moment a little more.  All the while more lanterns were being sent off at the main area in sets of 100.   The sky would be lit up like there were tons of stars.  It was beautiful.

It was a great night and despite us getting home super late at night, Sienna actually did quite well and Elli apparently had tons of fun at our friend's house.  

I think we will try to bring her next year though if we go again.  

Not much can top that experience as far as the Lantern Festival goes, but we also really enjoyed the Lantern displays they had set up in a short bus ride from our home in downtown Taipei.  It was really crowded at night, but the girls and I also enjoyed some of the displays during a playgroup outing during the day.
Lots of fun--almost as good as seeing lots of Christmas lights in December in Texas.
  Here are some of our favorite displays.

There were lots of dragon light displays since dragons are viewed as the luckiest of animals.

They also had some indigenous cultural shows going on.  When asking for volunteers, Elli didn't wait to be picked, but ran right up on the stage to participate in making music with this wood instrument. 

 On a play date, same place during the day.

 This one below was made out of entirely recyclable materials! This is my friend Monika and her son Cole who Elli calls Cold.

Happy Lantern Festival and End of the the Lunar New Year Festivities!!