After the cable ride, my aunt had the brilliant idea of taking us to Pingsi to watch and light a ‘sky lantern’, since it was the Chinese Lantern Festival. I’d never heard of or seen a sky lantern before. For the Chinese Lantern Festival, everyone gathers in one location and lights a HUGE lantern made of some type of paper, and the lanterns then FLY up into the sky! As some point, they’re so high up that they look like stars. Now imagine thousands of people lighting these lanterns in one area, and all these bright lanterns floating in the air at different heights in different directions. It was SO beautiful. In addition, there were fireworks going off, it was incredibly festive! As soon as we got to the location and I looked up at the sky, I felt like I was a kid again. It was such an amazing feeling of excitement and joy and wonder.
What added to the fun of the experience was the actual ordeal we went through just to get to Pingsi. Since the event is in the mountains (you’re probably noticing a pattern of mountains in Taiwan), the cops block off the road at some point and only buses can get in. By the time we got to the bus stop, they told us that we missed the last bus by 10 minutes! We (and a bunch of other disappointed lantern-enthusiasts) pleaded with the bus drivers to take us, but they refused. My aunt was like, well I guess we’ll drive as far as we can, park and then walk. So we took off into the windy mountainous roads and parked on some dirt patch when we saw the blocked off road ahead. After we walked about 15 minutes, we realized that it was not possible to get there on foot, as the roads got steeper and windier. So about 20 of us gathered on the side of the road to wave down empty buses that were going up to pick up passengers. One by one they ignored us, which was ridiculous because they were going up anyway, why not just be kind and take us up? Finally, one bus driver stopped and we cheered. The bus ride was about 20 minutes, good thing we did not attempt the walk! We saw so many young people on their scooters, and a bunch of them were on the side of the road waiting for their friends who were probably lagging behind. It looked like a lot of fun. I think I would have enjoyed being a teenager and young adult in Taiwan, the entertainment and leisure activities are actually a lot more diverse and fun here in my opinion.
So the tradition is that you write a wish or a bunch of wishes or whatever you want on the lantern. Light the paper at the bottom of the lantern. Then once it’s hot enough, the hot air pushes the lantern up and it goes flying into the dark sky. We did the first one wrong, and it pathetically drifted in a horizontal line before slowly descending into a rice patty somewhere. I think I was really disappointed (being the spoiled foreigner that I am) and so they went and bought another lantern for us to try again. This one worked perfectly! It was taken up into the sky within seconds! Yay! That made a much more satisfying end to the experience, haha!
Us watching a group of people light their lantern
Lanterns in the sky!
Lighting the paper at the bottom of the lantern
Me and the 'successful' lantern
(I also have a few good videos of the lanterns but the internet connection here is too slow to load videos, so I'm going to post all of my videos after I get back to the States)
By the time we got back to the car it was almost midnight, and since we were so energetic from the festivities we went to eat ‘sao-bing-yo-tiao’ at this 24-hour place. So YUMMY!
God is awesome. He gave us a beautiful day for the lantern festival. If it had been rainy like all the other days before, it would not have been very fun!
No comments:
Post a Comment