The Lantern Festival is a holiday that falls on the 15th of the first month of the Chinese calendar year. This year that day was last Sunday, Feb. 24th. There are many celebrations all over Taiwan, including a huge fireworks display in the south and a large celebration in downtown Taipei, but none compare to the celebration in Pingxi so naturally that is where we wanted to go.
Pingxi is this small remote mountain town east of Taipei. We left our apartment at about 11 am, bussed in to Taipei, took a local train out to the east coast, boarded our train to Pingxi and waited, sitting on the train for 45 minutes. I guess I should have felt lucky that we were able to sit. So after a 4 hour journey we arrived in Pingxi to start a day of standing shoulder to shoulder with people and shuffling along rather than walking.
We spent a while eating street food, people watching, and souvenir shopping before we bought our own sky lantern to write on and release. Before we went, we read that an orange lantern means wealth (we don't need that, and frankly it seems a little far fetched to wish for this year,) a white lantern signifies peace (white is too associated with death in this culture for us to give it much consideration) and pink means happiness (something we already have, but you can never have too much!) So we bought a pink one- though the lady selling it to us didn't have any clue about these meanings, so maybe that was all bullshit.
If you looked around at peoples lanterns they had so much written on some of them! We don't have that many wishes, and honestly, it felt a little petty to write very specific or trivial wishes down. Don't worry, we found stuff to write, even a shout out to the Iversons' beloved Cougars :). See for yourself:And then we sent our lantern with it's wishes into the ether, hopefully they come true! Some people weren't so lucky. Hal tried to take a picture of every lantern that caught on fire and died a horrible death. I guess their wishes won't come true. Every time a lantern was lit to be let go, everybody watching held their breath a little until it made it past the telephone lines and other obstacles. Then came a collective sigh of relief or the groans and exclamations of "oh no! Those poor people."
Around 6 pm when the sun went down, the ceremony started. There was a huge stage set up with a show to go along with the ceremonial, collective release of lanterns. This happens every 20 minutes from 6 until midnight. You have to reserve a spot and a time in order to be part of this release, that is why we did ours earlier. It was nice to just be able to watch though.
The first couple releases were of course nice, but we made the mistake of standing very close to the stage which meant there was no room the breath and the constant pressure and annoyance of the crowd around us. It was one of those instances where you have to spend the majority of your effort and attention to keep your balance and hold your ground so you don't get totally trampled and/or swept away by the crowd. When we moved further away we were finally able to relax and appreciate the beauty and majesty of those releases. Imagine seeing hundreds of lanterns simultaneously rising, carrying away everybody's hopes and dreams. It was really quite amazing. I could not help feeling emotional. 
Despite the crowds, and the ridiculous commute, I am so glad we went. I was just as impressive as it sounds. Really a wonder worth seeing!
