Setting the Sky on Fire

Lunar New Year is the biggest holiday in Taiwan, and traditionally it is celebrated not just for a day, but for almost a whole month ending with the Lantern Festival held on the 15th of the new Lunar Year.

I went on a school trip this past Saturday to get the full Lantern Festival experience. Our first destination was the Hakka (you remember the Hakkas from my last post, right?) exhibition in Sansia, a small town 40 minutes south of Taipei, where we learned how to make Hakka-style glutinous rice dumplings (they're like mochis, but without the filling, mmmmm....mochis) by rolling glutinous rice flour dough until it is fat and round (the Chinese really have an obsession with all things round, which is considered a complete and perfect shape), then they are boiled in a big wok, drained, then dumped into pots of sweet and savory soups. What I loved about the event was that, before any of us played around with the dough, the organizers asked us to go wash our hands as there is nothing more disgusting than eating dirty dumplings! Oh, and our dumplings were pretty tasty too!


Glutinous rice dumplings we rolled


Savory glutinous rice dumpling soup

Next, we drove to Pingxi (or Pingshi), the poster child for the idyllic small town in the mountains, connected to the rest of Taiwan by a rail line and winding mountain roads; it is the town that time forgot, with small bridges that ford the stream, and narrow ancient lanes filled with shops selling pointy straw hats, straw baskets, and straw brooms bound together with twine (I resisted the urge to buy straw merchandise, but it is giving me some ideas for Halloween). This town is so cute, it could not be made any cuter with the addition of large dopey-eyed kittens or fluffy bunny rabbits wearing large glossy bows. Tourists daytrip here on the weekends, but it is otherwise so quiet a my friend once told me that the residents work the weekends and take the weekdays off!



Pingxi is also famous for the sky lanterns during the Lantern Festival and Qi-xi (Chinese Valentine's Day). I teamed up with a new friend I met on the bus ride over, and using thick magic markers, we wrote our hopes, dreams, and prayers on the shoulder-high paper lanterns. The President of Taiwan was also there, standing on a platform about 15 feet away from us, writing on a giant lantern with a calligraphy brush and lucky red ink. Then the inflation process begins as a volunteer lights the paper inside the lantern, waiting for the cavity to fill with hot air, the outdoor lights are turned off, and finally a hundred or so lanterns are released en masse into the night sky. It is believed that the higher the lantern flies, the better your chances for the gods to read and grant your wishes. We watched and tried to keep track of our lantern, but it blends in with the other soft orange dots. It is one of the most amazing light shows ever, even beats the laser light show in Hong Kong hands down! (Pingxi sky lantern release video 1, video 2)


President Ma writes on a sky lantern

Throughout the evening, small private lantern releases were occurring all along the streets, so that at any given moment, the sky was dotted with little bits of glowing paper like large drifting stars. The eager beavers released their lanterns before it got dark, while the inexperienced ones watched their glowing globes full of wishes for the coming year go up in flames as their lanterns get caught in the power lines.

Oh, and an odd thing happened that day too, I met two other girls (both students at my school) who shared my Chinese name, last name and all - one came up to me on the bus and introduced herself, the third we both ambushed on the street. We should start a club.