Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival

Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

Every year, for ten days around the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, Taiwan holds a lantern festival. The origins of this are unclear; there are a number of theories about how it started, many full of gods and legends, so I'm not even going to try to pick one. Let's just accept the festival exists, and not worry about why.

Part of the festival is the huge lanterns that we showed in our last post 'Taipei - more sightseeing'. They are certainly amazing, and well worth seeing, but what we were really interested in was the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival.

Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

Sky lanterns are the beautiful, if contentious (due to potential fire risks and environmental concerns), paper lanterns that you light a wick at the bottom and they float up into the sky. They are believed to have been started by Chu-ko Liang, who was a highly skilled military strategist to Liu Bei (founder of China's Shu Han Dynasty, 221-264 AD), during the turbulent era of Three Kingdoms. He was also known as Kong Ming, meaning 'Hidden Dragon' to represent that he was able to achieve great things that people did not expect of him.



Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

Chu-ko Liang is said to have used smaller sky lanterns as a means of communicating military intelligence, so some call them Kong Ming lanterns. Others use the same name, but because they are the same shape as the hats that he is depicted as wearing.

Anyway, these days, on the fifteenth day itself, thousands of these lanterns are released, which truly is a sight to see.

And we nearly missed it!
Firstly, we went to the wrong place! It is called the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival, so we went to Pingxi. We had to take a train from Taipei to Ruifang, and then change trains to go on to Pingxi. However they kicked us off at a place called Shifen, and we had to find another train going to Pingxi. We got there, eventually, and decided to have a little wander around the village before finding the festival area.



Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

Thankfully, there wasn't much village to see, so it wasn't long before we started to look for where we were supposed to go, but we couldn't find it. We asked someone, who didn't speak any English, but seemed to be telling us it wasn't here. Hmmm, let's not panic yet, we probably just misunderstood.

We then managed to find someone who did speak English, and sure enough we were in the wrong place. She told us to get on a bus, which was laid on specially for the festival, and it would take us to the right place. We found the bus, still a bit unsure whether we were doing the right thing, and it took us right back to Shifen, where we had been kicked off the train in the first place.

Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

As it turns out, the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival is actually in Shifen!
So, now we were in the right place, and we were happily wandering along the train tracks - yes, that's right, this all happens along the tracks and we just get out of the way when a train comes - watching people buy a lantern, write their wishes on it, and send it up.




We decided to do one too. The lanterns come in a variety of colours, which symbolise different things like yellow or orange for wealth, pinks for love, marriage and family, and blue and green for careers. We chose red, which stands for health and peace. We wrote on our messages, and then they helped us light and launch it, taking a few photos first.



Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

So, our own lantern done, and it now getting quite dark, we started wondering why we couldn't see the expected swathes of mass releases; all we were seeing was individuals releasing their own. There were a lot, but it wasn't what we had expected.
We decided to take a walk further along the tracks, and suddenly, just as we were thinking that we were going nowhere and should turn back, we saw a load of lanterns in the sky nearby, and went haring off to find the source. We had to be quick, because our only way back was by train, and we didn't have that long before the last one goes.



Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

As we hurried along, we came across a family, who were also rushing along. They started indicating to us to hurry, and gave us a piece of paper that looked a bit like a ticket. At this stage, we figured it did no harm to follow, but we thought the ticket was to get in to the live entertainment that was going on at the stage by the release site, and we knew we didn't have time for that.


Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

When we got to the release area, the family showed their tickets and ushered us through too. They then disappeared, but we realised that we were now standing in a group waiting to have an opportunity to go on stage to release one of the big lanterns ourselves - the family obviously had a couple of spares, and gave them to us - how nice of them!



Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

It would have been great to have been a part of one of the releases, but sadly it was evident that our turn was not going to come for a while, and we didn't have time to do it and then get our train back. Had we known an alternative way back to Taipei, we would probably have waited and done it, but we didn't, so we had to go.

Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

We did have a chance to watch two of the releases at close quarters though, and it really was a lovely sight.

Pingxi Lantern Festival, Taipei

Taipei - more sightseeing

Taipei 101

We spent a few days happily wandering around Taipei. Unfortunately we didn't have the best weather, so our attempt to get up the Taipei 101 tower was foiled by heavy mist, which made paying to go up rather pointless, but we did pick up some very tasty pineapple cake in the foodhall downstairs.

Dihua Street, Taipei

We quite enjoyed a walk down Dihua Street, which has sections dating back to the mid 1660s, making it the oldest street in Taiwan, and still an important commercial area.

Peacock Bistro, Dihua Street, Taipei

But there are some nice little shops there too now, and some nice cafes. We enjoyed a stop at the Peacock Bistro, where we enjoyed lunch and trying some of their fruit liqueurs.

Something we hadn't expected to see, was a man sitting outside a cafe with what looked like a pet frog on a tiny lead next to him. Disappointingly, we later saw a shop that sold all sorts of frog souvenirs, so we suspect that his was just a fake frog from there.

Dihua Street, Taipei

We also checked out the Taiwan Brewery, one evening, not to do a tour, but just to visit their on site bar Beer 346, where you can buy their beers by the bottle or barrel, and sit outside to drink them. They sometimes have live music, but it was quiet when we were there, and we didn't stay that long, as they weren't serving food.

Instead, we found nearby Huashan 1914 Creative Park, which is an old wine producers factory from 1914, which was abandoned. It was 'discovered' in 1997 by members of a theatre company, and they started transforming it into a creative space. Eventually it was done officially,and it is now a thriving place for the arts. Of course it was mostly closed by the time we arrived, and we just went to the popular Alleycats Pizza place.

Dihua Street, Taipei

 

Dihua Street, Taipei

Talking of food, we did go to a little cafe that is famed for a real Taiwanese specialty, beef noodle soup. We had been recommended to go to Yong Kang, near Dongmeng station, which has been serving up its broth since 1963.

Lantern Festival, Taipei

It is something of an institution, ranking amongst the top in the competitive beef noodle soup world. They were certainly busy, with lots of people queuing up to get in when we arrived. We joined the queue, and before too long we were ushered upstairs to a shared table and presented with a menu, and a list to tick what we wanted.

Lantern Festival, Taipei

Of course the words on the menu didn't match the words on the order sheet, but with a bit of help, we ordered our soup. There is actually a lot of choice here, people only come for one thing, the only real question is what bits of beef and how much comes with it.

Lantern Festival, Taipei

Honestly, I can't say we were that impressed. Other people were definitely enjoying slurping their soup and sucking and chewing their beef, but, having spent years cutting all of the fat and gristle off of my meats, I couldn't enjoy beef that was more cartilage than actual meat. In all honesty, unlike many people, I don't think I will every truly enjoy most Asian food.

Lantern Festival, Taipei

Leaving the beef noodles behind us, our final stop was at the expo centre, where they had a huge display of lanterns, some of which were part of a competition. They were quite impressive.

Toilets, Taipei

Oh, there are two other things that I have to mention - both of which involve toilets. The first, we noticed in the stations, but it may be some other places too. The toilets have a little electronic board outside which shows a plan of the toilets, so that you can see how many there are of disabled, squat and western styles, and it also has a little coloured light next to each. The colour of the light indicates whether the toilet is occupied, vacant, out of use, or somewhat ominously, under investigation (presumably waiting for someone to deal with a blockage or something).

The second was a restaurant, that sadly we never managed to get to, but saw photos of. It is a toilet themed restaurant, where you sit on toilets, eat from miniature toilets, and some foods are shaped like poos. Now that is something I've never seen before or since, even in Japan.

Lantern Festival, Taipei

Chinese New Year in Singapore

From Bangkok, we flew to Singapore, arriving just in time for the Chinese New Year celebrations, shepherding in the Year of the Goat - or ram, or sheep, depending on which version you go with.

We decided to head into Chinatown to see the preparations.

It was busy. With the same frenzy of people in the UK doing their last minute gift shopping on Christmas Eve, or bulk buying food because they've heard there is going to be a bit of snow, people were hurriedly buying food, firecrackers, brightly coloured decorations and of course, a selection of gaudy goats!


We managed to catch a few of the Lion dances during the festivities period, mostly the cai qing style ones. The lions here are the Southern Chinese lions, each operated by two people, and they are accompanied by three musicians.

The troupes are usually from kung fu schools, and the movements of the lion area combination of marshal arts and acrobatics.

For the cai qing, the lions are enticed to the doorway of a business by cabbage or other greens hanging in the doorway, along with a red envelope containing lucky money.

The money is the reward for the troupe. The lions pluck and 'eat' the vegetables, and sometimes oranges, by taking them into their mouths, and the two guys inside then tear up the cabbage leaves and peel the oranges. The torn leaves and orange peel, sometimes together with a few sweeties, are then 'spat out'.


Apparently the reason that this is so desirable comes partly from the sound of the Cantonese word cai, which can mean cabbage/greens and fortune, so it is believed to bring good luck to the business.

Similarly, the Cantonese word for the mandarin oranges used sounds like the word for gold, so leaving the orange segments for the owner and staff brings them good fortune.

As this is Singapore's 50th year, one of the bigger celebrations was a lion dance at the Gardens by the Bay, where 50 lions took part. We had arrived early, which was just as well, as we got a spot right at the front; by the time it started, the crowd was at least six people deep.

The dances themselves were not the most intricate, it was predominantly a mass cai qing but it was quite impressive to see so many of the lions in one place. And they did include a bit of Dragon dancing as well.

For Chinese New Year itself, we joined locals and tourists down at the Marina. They had a big display of zodiac and other lanterns, which were most impressive. We did what all of the locals were doing, and found the ones that correspond to our own zodiac signs - the monkey for Nic and the pig for me.

They also had food stalls, traditional performances, a high wire act and the grand finale fireworks display.

Gōngxǐ fācái