Lantern Festival

Today, we decided to join a couple of my classmates, head into the mountains and enjoy the yearly Lantern Festival. We left early, as we live quite a ways south of our ultimate destination--Shi Fen (十分). We originally planned to leave in the afternoon, but after learning that several million other Taiwanese usually head to the same festival, we decided to leave a touch earlier to beat the crowds. Of course we forgot to return from Shi Fen early enough to beat the crowds on the way back, but more on that later.

The Lantern Festival occurs after Chinese New Year and while completely environmentally insensitive (everyone launches a wire and paper lantern levitated by a kerosene soaked and burning waxy paper into the air), it is quite a beautiful site. One buys a few lanterns, writes their wishes on the lanterns, and then, when the moment strikes, lights the lantern and launches it into the air. Of course it is quite important to have someone experienced assist with the first launch or so, as quite a few important operating instructions are often missed, resulting in less than ideal results. First, one has to remember that the lantern is made of paper and the engine soaked in kerosene. Before the lantern is inflated the engine has to be lit. Without proper care, the whole lantern can go up in flames before it even gets off the ground. Second, fill the lantern with hot air before releasing it. If there is not enough lift, the lantern quickly floats away from you, horizontally, dripping burning rocket fuel on the heads of the million other lantern aviators, causing much consternation. Third, and also very important, one must always look up before finding the ideal launching pad as there are buildings, trees and especially power lines that seem to be attracted to these lovely floating fireballs (see below).

We took our first train from Taoyuan to Taipei and met up with my classmates, Cassie and Jenny, at the Taipei main train station. From there we took a train to a small town and then transferred onto an MRT type train that went up to and through a string of five small towns in the mountains where we were heading. The train would head towards the end of the line, stop for a few minutes and then head back on the same rails. Our first destination was the end of the line, where we had a snack of red bean soup, bought some blank bamboo wishing stalks, wrote a few of our wishes thereon, and hung it on the fence (see above first picture). We stayed in the town and had some lunch, not realizing that the train would only come every two and a half hours. As a result, we had a leisurely lunch and then walked to the next town after missing one of the trains while we were eating.

At the next town and while it was daylight we attempted our first lantern. Fortunately, we had some assistance and learned the very important tips as listed above. These would be quite helpful for our night-time attempts. Our Lantern, missed the building, trees and powelines and floated off into the distance quite nicely.

Because of the massive crowds and because we wanted to go down the line on the train we devised a plan to take the train back up the line and then return with it down to Shi Fen where the nighttime festivities were going to take place. The plan worked and we were fortunate to find seats on the train back to Shi Fen. By the time we arrived, the sky was darkening and already thousands of floating lanterns filled the sky. Most of which were floating in formation off into the distance and over the distant hill out of sight and out of mind. We heard on the news the next day that some errant lanterns made their way to the Taipei Airport and caused a grass fire next to the runway (I am sure we were too far away for that to be one of our lanterns).


At Shi Fen we found a place to eat out on the balcony of a restaurant, ordered food and contemplated what we would wish for on our own lanterns. Anting came up with the idea that she was going to add a new more dangerous and extreme element to the lantern -- a string of fireworks. My protests fell on deaf ears as everyone in the group seemed to be unaware of any possible problem with lighting this already extremely flammable lantern and adding explosives to the equation, not to mention that this time around we had no supervision, oven mitts or protective headwear.

As we ate our dinner we watched several people successfully launch their lanterns and a few who tragically forgot to look before they launched. Some also, we observed, who chased around their lacking lift lanterns, frantically attempting to catch their fireball and then figure out how to extinguish it without themselves combusting--Dinner and a Show.

There was a steady stream of Lanterns in the air , but every so often there was a huge amount of them in the air at once. We found out that this was because at the stadium nearby they were releasing thousands of them at once.

The time came to launch our night time lanterns. The first three all went off without a hitch. We were very careful to ensure we applied all our lantern tips. Now came the moment of truth--the firecracker lantern. We decided it would be best to attach the firecracker to the middle of the bottom of the lantern so as to ensure balance on the take off. We also decided to light the firecracker fuse just seconds before launch in order to ensure that it would start exploding after it got quite high in the sky. Everything was going fine. The engine was lit. We waited the 20 seconds while the lantern filled with hot air. We could feel the lantern struggling to lift off against our resistance. We lifted it so that Anting could light the fuse and then...There was no fuse. The firecracker just immediately started exploding. The lantern barely had enough lift to pass over my head, singe my eyebrows and emit this deafening crackle that seemed to last an embarrassingly long time. (see the picture below for the moment of ignition). Fortunately the lantern gathered speed, managed to clear the parked cars, people, bridge and sail off into clear night.
As I mentioned earlier we had some trouble getting home. We had to fight through massive crowds of people and waited an hour an a half until we could get on the train back. It was incredible how packed the train was and people had to be shoe horned into the train cars. We arrived back in Taoyuan at about midnight after having previously deciding to go home at 7:30. After a definitely worthwhile experience we went straight to bed, me dreading the next school day, having not prepared my homework and Anting imagining some poor farmer picking up all those lanterns off his land the next morning.