The mountain town of Pingxi
Today Sharon and I went to the Pingxi Lantern Festival, which, if you look at the "Top 10 things to do in Taiwan" is high on that list. The festival takes place in a small mountain town called Pingxi, which is an hour east of Taipei in the mountains. Here's the story:
The Lantern Festival is a super old tradition (many thousands of years and I don't know the number.. between 2 and 100) that the Chinese use to celebrate the end of winter months, and the beginning of the new year. People write their wishes for the new year on their lanterns and like a hot air balloon send them into the sky. This is us with our lantern...
Sharon wrote "Go Leafs Go" on the opposite side
We hope this reaches Canada by 2034
Different colours are meant for different wishes. We didn't realize until afterwards that yellow was for money. The others? (orange = good luck, green = health, blue = friendship, purple = happiness, pink = love, white = future, and red = all wishes come true). We just picked the one closest to us. Here's what it looks like right in the action...
After we sent ours off we walked through the old street in town and watched some lanterns get sent off, check it out here:
http://youtu.be/Tnd0l3glS0o
*note: The music playing? That'd be the garbage truck. All garbage trucks play music in Taiwan. The ones in Taipei play Beethoven.
...and here are some shots from a distance.
It was getting a little cold so we hopped into a small tea place and enjoyed some saxophone played by the owner while watching others send off their lanterns:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARBs5BK-XQ&feature=youtu.be
Until next time,
- RS=T
"Sharon wrote "Go Leafs Go" on the opposite side
ReplyDeleteWe hope this reaches Canada by 2034"
BEST.
also, i love music playing garbage trucks. sorry we missed you this week. it was busy.