Some of you know that the Corona virus has impacted Taiwan a little differently than back in the US. The close proximity to China has caused a constant change to travel bans and quarantine rules (that thank god don’t apply to me because I didn’t travel outside the country over break). Everyone wears masks on public transportation and at one point there were lines out the doors of 7/11s that had stocked masks as people tried to buy as many as they could. Taiwan has done an excellent job in responding to the spread of the disease. Government officials visit the houses of those under home quarantine to check in and the government releases constant updates on precautions. More importantly, the Corona virus has given me 2 more weeks than I would’ve originally had for winter break to accommodate the long incubation period before symptoms are observable. That means two more weeks of travel and goofing off, putting off all my work to continue to experience Taiwan. I’m not complaining.
First up was the Ping Xi Lantern Festival. The festival is a week-long event that takes place in Shifen, the location of the waterfall I happened to take Morgan to a couple weeks before. It seems that the only reason people go to this area to begin with is because of the waterfall and the lanterns. You can now light a lantern every day, 365 days a year, if you really wanted. The difference between any other day and the actual lantern festival is that during the festival there is a field where everyone lets their lantern go up at once. It’s a flurry of red and white lanterns all rising into the sky. I’m picturing a version of the scene in Disney’s Tangled where the entire sky is filled with lanterns, the wishes of all the people below. On any other day outside of the festival the lanterns are sent up from the train tracks that run through the center of the small town. Standing on the train tracks, one of the walking paths in the town, you have to stay vigilant as the train officials will whistle anytime a train actually approaches causing all the people of the tracks to scatter like ants till the train passes and the tracks fill again with an assortment of people.
I did not get to experience the “real” lantern festival… thanks, corona
The only obvious reason for why on people wouldn’t show up on the second to last day of the festival, a Saturday at that, would be the easily spreadable disease. I wasn’t able to attend the first day of the festival because I chose to go to the Bombing Han Dan in 台東knowing that the lantern festival was a week-long event. I had warned my friend, Amanda, of the crowds in Shifen just based on when I went with Morgan. The trains were packed to bursting and the small alleys were hard to navigate. However, Amanda came back with stories of the crowds not being too bad. She had prepared for the worst as I had depicted and it didn’t live up to it. She said that a lot of the people in attendance were all wearing masks, but that wasn’t uncommon as it coincided with two weeks after the virus became more publicized.
I was excited. If the first day of the festival wasn’t that bad and the crowds weren’t deafening, I would have a much better time there. It seemed like everything was looking up. Originally, I had wanted to leave early to get to the festival just as the sun was setting so that I was there to record the first mass ascension of lanterns. However, Sean was studying for a test so in order to enable him to join me as my other friend canceled a little last minute, I had to leave a little later than planned. It takes approximately 2 hours to get to the small town in the mountains and we left around 4pm. On each of our trains as we moved away from the city proper instead of getting more crowded the people dwindled. I took the small crowds to mean that we left too late and everyone was already at the festival and that we must be missing something. I can’t imagine how jumpy and anxious I was on the train. I wanted the festival to be good and worth it for Sean as he continued to try to study on the different trains we took.
The worst part of the journey was being three towns away, but having to wait for almost an hour for the connecting train to take us the rest of the way. Taxi drivers kept beckoning us towards their cars offering to take us to the town, but charging obscene amounts like 400$ (which is only around 13$ USD, but a lot for Taiwan). We chose to instead wait it out for the next train which we already had a ticket for (only 40$ NTD ~ 1.50$ USD). Walking around the mountain town of Ruifang for our train we happened upon a small ice creamery and shared an Oreo sundae. I mean who can turn down real ice cream which is hard to find here. That sundae was gone in seconds.
When we finally made it to the Shifen station it was silent. You could probably hear crickets and I’m not even exaggerating that much here. I was astounded and then started to worry that I got the dates wrong, checking my calendar multiple times as we walked to the town’s center. There were some people, but definitely no more than 20 other tourists. Families with kids running around. Older couples using the calligraphy brushes and writing long wishes on their lanterns to be sent up. That’s when I realized there was no crowd of people walking to the “field”, no one hurrying to finish writing on their lantern to make the next mass ascension. There was no rush because there were no crowds. It was like a fake event. The idea of large crowds of people turned so many tourists away from attending the festival that it wasn’t a festival any more. It hadn’t been worth Sean missing hours of possible studying as he accompanied me, replacing my friend who couldn’t make it. I kept apologizing to him for dragging him into virtually the middle of nowhere Taipei to send up a lantern he was against in the first place. Side note, before we even got to Shifen I was required by Sean to watch a Youtube video depicting the environmental degradation resulting from the tradition of lighting lanterns. The lanterns go up, but they also must come down and down they do. The video had interviewed farmers in the area who had to keep a lookout unless they were hit in the head while tending to their fields, or the old grandmas who make a living recycling the small bits of metal in the lanterns in exchange for meager portions of oil and rice. I had to promise to go on a clean-up expedition if I wanted to send one up.
As we moved down the train tracks different stores kept asking us to buy their multi-colored lanterns until finally, we caved and got one. A solid red one, the traditional color for health, well-being, and good wishes. Sean and I took turns writing our wishes on the balloon in a combination of Chinese and English. Once we were finished one of the young workers took our lantern and helped us to spread it out and they lead a small photo session. It was entertaining because we had asked them to use the goPro and to take videos instead of pictures. It wasn’t till we switched to fully speaking Chinese (before they were speaking English to us before we even had a chance to say we understood Chinese) that they understood we would rather have a video than pictures. And with that they lit our lantern and it sailed off into the air. We watched as it rose and went over the mountains. Only then did we start making our way back to the train.
I am still disappointed for not being able to experience the real celebration of having hundreds of people release their wishes to the mountains, but I am glad I still got to in the end. The one saving grace of the festival was meeting another small group of tourists as we waited for the train. One of them was wearing a Virginia shirt and I just had to ask if she was actually a student there. We found that she was and had just graduated in the Spring of last year. Cassidy is now in the Army, stationed in South Korea. We also met two other travelers, one from Japan and the other Vietnamese. It made the long trip back to Taipei main station a lot more fun laughing and sharing stories with our small group. I even learned a little Japanese!
My new found friends made on the trip back to Taipei
I’ve tried to do things over the rest of break that have been on my bucket list for a while: having a game night, going out with some of Sean’s friends who I intend to steal and make my friends, and making cinnamon rolls. So far, I’ve crossed a couple off the list. I even crossed making cinnamon rolls off. We didn’t put melted butter in the inside so all the sugar and cinnamon ended up on the bottom, but we made nice buns in the end. Trivia was a little harder. Our team came in second to last. All the history questions were Chinese history based (I have no clue) and the pop culture, the one topic I can really help it -typically, was asking questions about things that happened in the 1980s. Why would anyone care about the 80s? I don’t know, but at least I had an excuse to have vegan nachos as the vegan restaurant hosting the trivia event.
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