The Lantern Festival

If there were any questions what year this is in the Chinese Zodiac, the Lantern Festival answered them. Big horse, little horses, green horses, horse-shaped lazers, paper horses, horse balloons, shiney horses, glowing horses -- everywhere. I stayed away from the street vendors on this night with concerns of how far the horse mania went.

I went to the festival with a group of Hess teachers. The Chiang Kaisheck Cultural Center was flooded with people lighting fireworks and displaying lanterns and trying to make a buck selling souveniers. Every hour or so, the super huge horse lantern in the middle of the square would light up and music would play and lazers would do lazery things.

On the sidewalks around the perimeter of CKS, lanterns from all over Taiwan were displayed. There was a selection of 3-D renditions of great paintings glowing in one spot, the Taipei Zoo displayed all their animals in lantern form, great scenes from chinese history were created from the glowing paper sculptures, too.

After walking around the square and seeing the sites, the battery ran low on my camera. We later went to the Shilin Night Market-- a killer huge nightmarket north of downtown Taipei -- and ate and drank and shopped. I'll post more pictures from different night markets later on the site. The local market here in Hsi Chih is much more practical then fun, so an excursion to Snake Alley will be in order -- after my next paycheck, , ,

I have come to the conclusion that I must, MUST, have a Vespa soon so that I can see more of the island quickly. Riding the trains, though much cheaper then in the states, gets expensive and you miss seeing many sites while sitting the over-crowded, sweaty cars with Chinese Christian fundamentalists and screaming babies. To quote Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence, "on a motorcycle, you do not see the world pass before you from behind glass like seeing a picture on a television. You, instead, are in the picture." I prefer to be in the picture then to watch it, y'know what I mean?

I also have to locate some good deoderant. They only have one brand here, Rexona. It is not strong enough for a man, nor PH balanced for a woman. It is scented like cheap plastic flowers, though. I smell like sweaty gardinias. HELP.

In the next few weeks, I plan to get a scooter (Vespa uber alles), see the Chinese Opera, do my forms in Chiang Kaisheck square, and ride my bicycle all the way through Taipei -- last time I road to Taipei, I got lost and wound up hitting some balls at golf driving range in some highly industrialized part of town. More pics to come.

home>>