La La Lanterns

        Lantern festivals are very popular in Taiwan, particularly during Chinese New Year.  One of the most famous festivals is held in the tiny town of Pingxi.  (If you watched last season of The Bachelorette, during their stay in Taiwan, they go on a date to this town to light off their own lanterns on the railroad tracks.)  It's one of the biggest lantern festivals, and crowds of around 80,000 people invaded this little place to take part in it all.  I decided to make myself part of that number! 

     It was a hectic attempt to make it in time, as we had to work on Saturday afternoon, Anthony and I until 4:30, others were off earlier.  During lunch time we were discussing possible transportation routes with some of the Chinese staff at school.  They said we were nuts; not only would it be insanely crowded but getting their alone would be quite the challenge, not to mention our time constraint.   A Chinese teacher, Peja, said there was no way we would make it with traffic, that we should just go and spend the day on Sunday when we could send up our own lanterns.  But then we would miss the night time release of hundreds of lanterns as that was only going on this Saturday night, that was the main thing I wanted to see! 

        We decided that Abe, Greta, and Mike would take off earlier on a bus to Taipei where they would find where we take another bus to the little town of Pingxi.  Then they could tell Anthony and I exactly where to go since we would be running behind.  Later in the day, though, Peja told me that he had decided to make the trip to Pingxi as well!  He's from Taiwan and had never experienced the festival there, large crowds aren't his thing, but he thought that now he wanted to see it for himself.  This worked out really well as he would be driving his car with a friend, and there was room for Anthony and I to ride with!  We drove to Taipei and he knew where we could hop on a bus to Pingxi, another 45 minutes. 

       Getting off the bus it didn't seem so bad, there was an outrageous amount of buses running back and forth.  We didn't need to walk very far before hitting the masses of people, though.  It was immensely packed, like so you couldn't move sometimes.  Good thing for cellphones, we were able to find Greta, Abe and Mike quickly.  Apparently the President of Taiwan had been there and given a speech shortly before we arrived.  Abe thinks he bumped into him and the security gave him a nasty look!

   Pictures just can't show how awesome the lanterns being released were. It was really foggy which caused a lot of blur. 

      We also quickly lost Peja and his friend, they were off to find some other people they knew, too.  We made our way through the streets, it was full of typical food vendors and trinket shops, as well as many places selling big lanterns you could buy, write on with a blank ink paintbrush, and then light off into the night sky! We bought some lanterns and got to work decorating them!  You are supposed to write your wishes for the new year on the lantern and then send them up.  

People who could write real Chinese wishes! 

 Our not so Chinese messages.

      Abe, Victoria, Robin, and Mike with their lanterns! 

    We were now ready to send off our lanterns.  With the help of the old man who sold them to us, we had the proper materials to set fire underneath and away it went!  It was pretty neat. Naturally there was also an ass load of fireworks going off at every moment, some pretty large ones that rained down around us. 

             There's our lantern somewhere up in the sky!

     The festival only went until 9, an early night right?  This is the time they stopped have huge releases of lanterns, you could still send off your own, and all the vendors shut down.  This is also the time all of the thousands of people wanted to get back on the buses that brought them to Pingxi and go into the city.  This equals massive lines with lots of waiting.  We weren't even sure when the end was, and there was a lot of security with those glowing sticks directing people this way and that.  We saw a gap and tried to jump in, but then some Chinese lady started bitching about us cutting in line.  She called the security over and we pretended to be stupid foreigners, cause really we are and we didn't even know where to go.  She pointed us in the direction of the end.  About a mile later we had reached the end, seriously! It was out of control.  There were 2 lines actually, one for if you wanted to sit on the bus, and one for if your just wanted to be crammed into a bus soon like a herd of cattle.  We chose the cattle option. 

         Almost exactly 2 hours later, we were finally on a bus back into Taipei.  It was 11 20, the MRT closes at midnight, usually, and the last train home to Jhongli left at 11.  Poopsick. We made it back to the Zoo MRT line where they drop you off, it was midnight, and figured we'd just grab a taxi here and cab it back to Jhongli.  Only a few minutes had passed of us waving around trying to flag down a cab before a woman informed us that the only taxi's that came to this area were by phone call only. "Would we like her to call one for us," she asked?  Well that would be simply lovely! (See, people in Taiwan really are nice!)  "Where are you going?" she wondered. "Jhongli."  Her arm went up to her heart like she was having an attack, "Aiiyo! So far!" She exclaimed!  Yes, yes, but it's our only option.  Well it turns out ALLLLLLLL the cabs in the city of Taipei were busy, or none wanted to drive to Jhongli, because she didn't have any luck on the phone. 

        We were in luck though, that the MRT was still running from where we were, the Zoo is on the outskirts of town, and since getting a taxi was clearly an issue, they were letting people take the MRT.  We got on, had in mind where we needed to get off. Ok. 

         Not ok, a few stops down, Abe realizes we should get off at the current stop.  We make a dash to hop off the subway. The doors start closing.  Mike slides through.  Greta is left behind. AH! (She says everyone rushed over to her on the subway after seeing what happened and was like "ohhh you will find your friend, here, call them, oh no!" They were very caring.) We left Greta on the MRT, it's now 12 30 am, and we don't speak Chinese! Greta is reasonably quite upset, and we call her and make a plan, we'll just take another line to meet up with her at a different stop.  Wellll no other lines are running. We call her back and tell her to get off at the next stop, we find some workers and get a map with the Chinese of that MRT stop, find a taxi, and we're off to rescue Greta!  

       WE FOUND HER! Good, we're already in a taxi, she'll just hop in and he'll drive us to Jhongli.  No, he doesn't want to go there.  We offer him 2,000 for the trip (about 60 US, over double the normal price). No go.  We get out and see a sign proclaiming, TAXI STAND.  Hooray! And there's an SUV taxi already sitting there, (there are 5 of us, remember) Double hooray!  The driver wasn't paying attention, he was just chillin' in the taxi reading a book.  We walk over and he looks up after we're all surrounding the vehicle and I thought he was gonna lock the doors and drive away, his face was really scared!  Good thing he rolled down the window, and said Ok when we told him we wanted to go to Jhongli! 

         Back in Jhongli around  1:45 am, who knew it only takes 25 minutes without any traffic on the highway!