Lantern Festival

[GrayMouser]

Yesterday and today Chinese people celebrate the Lantern Festival, mostly by watching beautiful displays of lights.

The customs in our little town in Taiwan are a little more vigorous.
All the local Taoist gods and goddesses are taken out from the innumerable temples and shrines, dressed in their finest clothes, placed on litters and carried through the streets in a two-dayprocession that lasts from noon to the early hours of the morning.

Each one is accompanied by the temple's adherents, a truck festooned in lights and decorations ( these days some of them are almost like Western floats) loaded with drums, gongs
and horns that pound out a continuous cacophany; there are also
teams of martial-arts dancers, elaborately costumed with fiercely-painted faces, twirling swords and spears, as well as huge figures of various deities and heroes being carried above the crowds.

The biggest attraction, however, is the firecrackers.
Local businesses spend huge sums on these to attract good luck for the coming year. The idea is to wait until one of the gods is passing, then set off huge strings of crackers. The litter carrriers dance through the smoke and fire which obscures the entire street- the noise is deafening . Dangerous, too- rockets flying all around, and the streets are ankle deep in paper by the time it's finished.


Some of the dancers go into trances, and put knitting-needle sized pins through their flesh or cheeks, often hanging weights off them, or doing self-flagellation till they bleed.

The legend of the local festival is based on a ruffian from the old pioneering days- bandit, murderer, etc.- whose bullying ways finally drove the locals to take action, seizing and binding him, pushing him out to sea in a boat full of gunpowder and blowing him up.

As he was sinking beneath the waves he supposedly repented (how anybody knows, it doesn't say) and was taken up by angels, whence to become a god of peace and forgiveness- that's the official story; actually he's the patron saint of local gangsters, who supply most of the warrior dancers.

A volunteer is chosen each year to play the role; he undergoes training to put himself into a trance and is possesssed by the spirit of the deity, and as the central figure of the procession, is carried through the streets on a litter, clad only in a pair of shorts and a wet towel to cover his mouth and nose.

Strings of firecrackers are thrown at him or held up to his body on poles- the spirit supposedly protects him from harm- these crackers are large and powerful, and constantly land on his bare skin. (after the festival he gets a big sum of money from the donations.)

This is happening outside my window right now, and will be going on for hours- not much sleep tonight!