Coverage / Taiwan
Taiwan
East Asia
An island of steep, forested mountains and warm coral seas off the southeast coast of China. Taiwan pairs a spine of peaks above 3,000 metres, from Yushan to Snow Mountain, with dive islands like Green Island and Xiaoliuqiu, the night markets and grand museums of Taipei, and a folk calendar of sky lanterns, beehive fireworks and the nine-day Mazu pilgrimage.
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What you can do in Taiwan
Witness / Attend
- Dajia Mazu PilgrimageDajiaMar AprThe Dajia Mazu Pilgrimage is one of the largest religious gatherings on the planet and the beating heart of Taiwan's folk faith. Each spring, the statue of the sea goddess Mazu is carried out of Dajia Jenn Lann Temple in Taichung and escorted on foot for nine days and eight nights, about 340 kilometres south to Xingang in Chiayi and back, passing through more than a hundred temples across four counties. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims walk part or all of the route, day and night, while whole towns line the roads to greet the palanquin, set off firecrackers, and offer free food, drink and a place to sleep to anyone on the walk. Believers kneel in the road so the god's sedan will pass over them for blessing, and the air is thick with incense, drums and the tossing of divination blocks. There is no ticket and no stage; the event is the crowd itself, a river of devotion moving through the countryside. Joining even a single day on foot, or watching the departure and return at Dajia, is one of the most moving cultural experiences in Asia.
- Pingxi Sky Lantern FestivalPingxiFeb MarThe Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival is Taiwan's most photographed folk event, when the whole night sky above a small railway valley fills with rising paper lanterns. Held each Lantern Festival, the close of the lunar new year, in the old coal towns of Pingxi and Shifen, it draws thousands of people who write hopes and prayers on tall paper lanterns, then release them all at once so that hundreds of glowing lights climb together into the dark. The New Taipei City Government has run it as a mass public event since 1999, staging synchronized releases and lantern displays over two evenings, but the ritual itself is older and folk in spirit, a way of sending wishes up to heaven. It is free to watch and open to anyone, and outside the festival you can launch your own lantern from the train tracks at Shifen any day of the year. To do it well, come by train, expect dense crowds, and stay for the mass release rather than just the daytime market.
- Yanshui Beehive Fireworks FestivalYanshuiFeb MarThe Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival is one of the most extreme folk events on earth, a night when a small Tainan town deliberately fires tens of thousands of bottle rockets point-blank into the people standing in front of them. It centres on Yanshui Wu Temple, dedicated to the warrior deity Guan Gong, and dates to the nineteenth century, when townsfolk say a rocket barrage during the Lantern Festival drove out a cholera epidemic. Ever since, on Lantern Festival night, sedan chairs carrying the gods are paraded through the streets and stopped before huge frames called beehives, packed with rockets, which are lit so that the swarm of screaming fireworks blasts into the surrounding crowd. Participants pack into full-face helmets, thick jackets, gloves and towels and stand in the storm on purpose, believing the more rockets strike you the more luck you carry into the year. It is loud, chaotic and seriously dangerous, and to witness it is to see faith and adrenaline collide. Watch from the edge unless you are fully geared and ready for the barrage.
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