If you've ever seen the movie Tangled, you know what a sky lantern is.
Well, I can tell you from experience that the magic of sky lanterns isn't just something out of a fairy tale. Every year, the village of Pingxi marks the Chinese New Year with a several week long Sky Lantern (天燈) Festival and fills the sky with so many beautiful lanterns it would make Mandy Moore jealous.
This year's Chinese New Year festivities started on the Lunar New Year, January 23. It is estimated that every year between 100,000 and 200,000 lanterns are released in the cute little hamlet of Pingxi over the course of the festival. However, the biggest day of festivities falls on the last day of the Chinese New Year, which this year was February 6th. On the final day of the festival, the town organizes a big concert and a mass release of 1,000 lanterns at once (it's amazing, see above video).
I wonder what the measure word is for a group of lanterns? Herd, plethora, murder?
Apparently the tradition of lantern launching in the area first began after the Han settled there. There was so much crime in the area that the settlers began using lanterns as a way of signaling to each other that they were safe. This tradition eventually evolved into a full scale yearly festival after the town;s coal mines shut down in the late 20th century and the villagers needed a new source of income. And, when you go, you definitely get the feeling that this event is the town's bread and butter. Everyone and their brother (literally) sets up booths all along the sides of the road selling everything from stinky tofu and grilled squid on a stick to Turkish chicken wraps and patterned bath robes. And, of course, there are lanterns of every size and style for sale everywhere.
Every kind of dumpling imaginable!
This guy was selling brown sugar lollipops, spicy snails, and corn on a stick all at one very enterprising stand
Toy lanterns and night light lanterns for sale next to a stack of ready to launch DIY lanterns
In some ways, today's lanterns still retain some of their original meaning. The only difference is that now, instead of being a symbol of safety, they are used as more of a prayer for safety in the new year. Nowadays, it's become popular for people paint their wishes for the new year, which usually includes something about health and safety, on a lantern and then light them up and let the lanterns carry their wishes to heaven. The streets and train tracks were swarming with people painting their wishes and releasing them. Some of the lanterns were cute, some were funny, one or two were quite pretty and, in accordance with the Chinese zodiac, dragons abounded.
This lantern reads: "Mega Millions + Super Lotto + (something I can't make out in Chinese) = Billionaire!"
This little guy falls firmly into the cute category
One of the more impressively painted dragons (yeah, I was a little jealous of their lantern painting skills)
Cherrica, Christine, and I painted our own lantern with my host parents, Jane and Jason.
Jane's side, she wished for health, luck, and peace in the new year.
Cherrica and I signing our side, complete with dino-dragon holding explosives. It says "Happy year of the dragon!"
Christine drew a crowd that watched eagerly to find out if a foreigner can really write in Chinese (spoiler: she can)
Jason's side
Getting ready to launch our wishes!
There it goes!
Although the whole day was absolutely amazing, nothing can compare to the grand finale mass lantern release and concert. While we didn't get there in time to release a lantern in the first wave (there were already over 2,000 die hards lined up for the noon sign up when we arrived at 11), we were lucky enough to get a place in the third wave of lanterns (and, by default, a better of the first wave when they went off!). It was a great experience and I'm so happy I got to participate in the festivities.
Please note that, while the following pictures and the video at the beginning of this blog are pretty, they just can't do the real thing justice. My advice: If you're ever in Taiwan in early February, you just have to go see the lantern festival for yourself. It's breathtaking!
Setting off the first wave of lanterns
This is what 1,000 lanterns looks like!
Getting ready to set off our (rapidly decorated) lantern
I feel like some sort of "Goodnight Moon" reference would be appropriate here?
As some of you may remember, I was thrilled last month when I passed my driver's test and became officially licensed to drive a scooter in Taiwan. Little did I know at the time that that was only the beginning of a month of traveling woes that I have come to think of as "The Scooter Saga."
Let's start at the beginning. One of my elementary schools, Dong Sing, isn't actually in Luodong. It's one town over on Dongshan township, so it's about a 20-25 minute drive from my apartment. In other words, if I wanted to get to work this year, I had to get a scooter. Not to mention that scootering is pretty much the only convenient way to get to my weekly Chinese class at Fo Guang University and to the English Village (both of which are on the far side of Yilan, a good 30 minutes away).
Shortly after I first met Siena, she went to a school meeting and, when she was telling everyone about the new waiguo laoshi (foreign teacher), she mentioned that I needed a scooter. It turns out that the vice president of one of the biggest scooter shop chains in Taiwan is also a high ranking member of the Dong Sing Elementary PTA. Upon hearing that I was going to have to buy a scooter, he offered to give me one for the year instead. For free! I've said it before and I'll say it again: Taiwan has some of the nicest people in the world.
I still have yet to meet my mysterious benefactor but, over the course of the last month, I have met the employees from two of his shops... quite a few times, actually. In fact, if my Chinese were better, we would probably have been on a first name basis by the time all was said and done.
The first time I went to the shop, they told me that the scooter hadn't arrived at the shop yet but that it would be ready in a few days so I should come back later. I went back later and they said that the scooter was ready, they just had to send some paperwork to Taipei to get the ownership transferred to me. I gave them my paperwork and they said to come back tomorrow. When I went back again, they told me the paperwork still wasn't ready so I should come back next week. After several weeks of this (and more visits than I care to think about), Siena finally figured out that the scooter had belonged to the vice president's daughter and that she had misplaced the ownership license. So, after the paperwork didn't go through the first time, they had to apply for a new ownership license so that they could transfer ownership to me.
In the meantime, Siena finally asked them if they could just lend me a scooter so that I had a way to get around while I waited. So here it is, borrowed scooter #1: the Behemoth.
It was huge and teal and way too heavy for me to move by myself if it ever fell over but it was 125 CCs and it drove really well... until I tried to ride it home from Yilan one night. That's when I found out that the headlight didn't work. Yeah. When people drive as crazily as they do here in Taiwan, them not being able to see you on the road at night is a problem. So, after taking my life in my hands a few times to get the places I had to go in the dark (Christine drove in front of me so that her headlight would make us both noticeable), it was back to the scooter shop for me.
And so we come to borrowed scooter #2: the Little Yellow Scooter that Couldn't
This scooter was a lot smaller and lighter, it had a working headlight, and it was a cute yellow color. But that's where its positive attributes end. This scooter was 50 CCs of pure failure.
My relationship with this cantankerous old scooter was brief
but quarrelsome. I'm pretty sure it was actively trying to kill me.
The little yellow scooter never wanted to start and, when I finally would get it running, it shook so badly that I was pretty sure parts were about to start falling off. To top it off, whenever I had to stop at a red light, it had a habit of just giving up on life and shutting off. Which brings us back to the problem of it refusing to turn on... when stuck I'm in the middle of the road... in heavy traffic. In other words, for a few very long days, it was bad news bears.
Then, as I was about to give up and just start walking to school, the paperwork finally went through (about three weeks after this all began).
Ladies and gentlemen (drumroll, please), I give you... MY SCOOTER!
But our tale doesn't end here.
Despite a rather promising beginning, I soon ran into problems with this scooter as well. It got me to school a few times (including once in the pouring rain) but this scooter was rather difficult to get started as well. Then came the day that I tried to leave for school and it wouldn't start at all. After some frantic phone calls, I finally managed to get a hold of someone who could come pick me up and take me to work. I was an hour late. It was not fun.
So, after school, it was back to the scooter shop for me. (Side note: If it weren't for my wonderful co-teacher Siena and all of her help, I would have given up on this whole scooter thing long before I got to this point). Thankfully, there weren't any major problems with my scooter. So the friendly mechanics (who I'm sure were totally sick of seeing me by this point) tweaked a few things and got it running again.
Now, my scooter and I have come to an agreement of sorts. As long as I have a little patience and I don't let anyone else try to start her (much like my cat back home, my scooter doesn't like other people), she runs just fine. I've decided to name her Amelia Jean after the new Jack's Mannequin song of the same title. It's a traveling song, so I figure it's appropriate.
Here in Taiwan, the 15th day of August in the Chinese Lunar calendar is the Moon Festival. This year, that day lined up with September 12 on the Gregorian calendar.
So what is the Moon Festival? For me, the Moon Festival means a day off school, lots of friendly people giving Christine and I moon cakes and pomelos, and getting the opportunity to attend a real Taiwanese style backyard family barbeque with my awesome host family.
My refrigerator contents: cereal, soda, 4 pomelos, and
more boxes of moon cakes than I care to count
In case you were wondering what a moon cake looks like,
here's a picture from one of our many moon cake eating parties.
They're all filled with different things.
From a slightly more cultured perspective, the Moon Festival celebrates the Mid-Autumn harvest. It falls on the day that the moon is fullest and closest to Earth. There is, of course, a fun myth that goes along with the Moon Festival. There are a lot of variations of the story of Chang'e, the woman on the Moon, but it generally goes something like this:
Chang'e and her husband Houyi were immortals living in heaven. One day, the ten sons of the Jade Emperor (the Emperor of heaven) transformed into ten suns and began to scorch the Earth and cause a severe drought. Having failed to order his sons to stop ruining the earth, the Jade Emperor summoned Houyi for help. Houyi, using his legendary archery skills, shot down nine of the sons, but spared one son to be the sun. The Jade Emperor was obviously not pleased with Houyi's solution to save the earth: nine of his sons were dead. As punishment, the Jade Emperor banished Houyi and Chang'e to live as mere mortals on earth.
The whole nine yards: Chang'e, the Jade Rabbit,
and some moon cakes.
In an attempt to regain their immortality, Houyi went on a quest for the elixir of life and eventually found the pill of immortality. You only needed to take half the pill to gain immortality. However, Chang'e ended up taking the whole pill because, depending on the version of the story, either Houyi became king and turned into a despot or Houyi's evil archery apprentice tried to steal the pill for himself. Or perhaps she was just curious. Either way, taking the whole pill caused her to fly out the window and up to the moon, where she's been hanging out ever since. While Chang'e became lonely on the moon without her husband, she did have company. A jade rabbit who manufactured elixirs with his mortar and pestle, also lived on the moon. But even if the rabbit succeeds in making another pill of immortality, Chang'e has no way of getting it to her husband, who is said to have built a palace on the sun since his wife floated away.
One more fun random fact about Chang'e for all my relatives from Titusville. She was mentioned in the conversation between Houston Capcom and Apollo 11 crew just before the first Moon landing (compliments of Wikipedia):
"Houston: Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning there's one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says a beautiful Chinese girl called Chang-o has been living there for 4000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill for immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is only standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not recorded.
Collins: Okay, we'll keep a close eye for the bunny girl."
Okay, long tangent. Back to my experience with the Moon Festival.To celebrate, most Taiwanese families like to get together and barbeque outside where they can see the moon. So, since my family is all back home in America (and also has no idea what the Moon Festival even is), my host family here was kind enough to invite me to a barbeque with their next door neighbors at their house.
A quick introduction to my host family:
Jane, who teaches fifth grade at Dong Sing, and Jason, who works at the
Yilan Teacher's Center. They're pretty much the nicest people ever!
Candy, she's adorable. She can't understand most of what I say in my broken
Chinese but we've bonded over cat's cradle, the awkward sea turtle, and my
other random tricks.
Candy even helped to make dinner
I have my own apartment here in Taiwan, so I don't actually live with my host family. They're just really awesome, friendly people who are willing to hang out with me, show me around Luodong, and help me work on my bad Chinese.
The moon Festival barbeque was delicious but unlike any American barbecue I've ever attended. Here's some of what we grilled:
Tofu stuffed with pork and cilantro. Jason dared me to eat one. Of course I did.
Only when he was sure I had swallowed it did he inform me that it was in fact
a smoked pig snout.
Pork, you wrap it in lettuce or wonderbread when you eat it.
Squid balls!
More squid. These guys were slightly more lifelike but equally delicious.
Fresh shrimp! It was like being back in Florida.
And here are the chefs hard at work:
Despite their young age, the boys from next door were grilling pros
Happy feasting!
Long story short, it was a good night, my host family is awesome, and Christine and I will never finish eating all of our moon cakes!
I just found out yesterday that I received a Fulbright ETA (English Teaching Assistantship) award to Taiwan for the 2011-2012 school year. Not too much to report yet but, at the request of pretty much everyone, I've decided to start a blog to chronicle my experiences abroad which, in case you were wondering, are going to be AWESOME.
I figure maybe, just maybe, if I start it now, I'll actually keep up with it. My last attempt at blogging, which I took on while studying abroad in Beijing, ended up being (with a little help from the "great fire-wall of China") a sad and neglected little corner of the internet. This time, I have no excuse, I'm going to do better. In fact, if it were January instead of the end of April, I would make that my New Years resolution (because those always turn out so well).
Anyhow, without further ado, I now officially begin the record of my Fulbright!
