Recently, Hui-chen went looking on the internet for something to do, and she found this local festival in Xinpu, a township close to where we live in Taipei Taiwan. It coincided with the Lantern Festival, and at first I thought it was just a local Lantern Festival, but as I looked around, it seemed a little different. This festival apparently is a Lantern Festival that celebrates the Hakka People, and this area has many Hakka Taiwanese. Hakka people came from China to Taiwan a very long time ago. We have a friend who is a 9th generation Taiwanese Hakka. There was absolutely no information about the festival anywhere, so we walked around and enjoyed the carnival atmosphere.
There were lots of floats on display.
As you can see, some of them were quite elaborate.
We came to this cool display of hand painted lantern shades.
Hui-chen is pointing out the Doraemon lantern shade because Phoenix likes Doraemon.
As you can see, there were literally thousands of lantern shades on display. I got the impression that these were all done by school children.
Definitely a carnival festival going on.
Lots of vendors selling you-name-it. n, until I eventually told the ride operator that the kids were bored.
Take a look at this activity. Shooting balloons with arrows. What if your aim is high? There is a very fine mesh net above the backboard, but it didn’t look substantial enough to me.
Last but not least, is this photo of one of the vendors. He’s selling mountain pork in the form of meat-on-a-stick, and sausages. We didn’t try it, but we often have mountain pig and it’s delicious.
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Geotagged photos by MJ Klein
Former field engineer MJ Klein now lives in Taiwan, and writes articles that primarily feature photographs of travels of MJ and wife Hui-chen, plus daily goings on in the bustling island nation of Taiwan, and other places in Asia. Articles feature people, culture, food, situations and sometimes the trials and tribulations of traveling in places such as China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Laos and of course Taiwan.
