Detailed Introduction
Night settles over Pingxi in New Taipei, and thousands of sky lanterns rise all at once, each carrying a wish written stroke by stroke, drifting slowly upward like a sky full of moving stars. This is the Lantern Festival — the 15th of the first lunar month, and the last night of the Lunar New Year, also called the "Little New Year" or the Shangyuan Festival. The day brings traditional customs of eating tangyuan, admiring lanterns, and guessing lantern riddles, and grand celebrations are held all over. The Lantern Festival is also the first of Daoism's "Three Origins Festivals" — the Shangyuan Festival, the birthday of the Heavenly Official — and folk belief holds that the Heavenly Official descends to the human world this day to bestow blessings, hence the saying "Shangyuan bestows fortune."
Pingxi Sky Lanterns
The releasing of sky lanterns in Pingxi District, New Taipei is the most romantic sight of the Lantern Festival. Thousands of lanterns rise together, their points of light drifting slowly up the night sky like stars, a magnificent scene. Each lantern is inscribed with people's wishes and prayers, carried skyward as a symbol of those hopes reaching Heaven. The origin of the Pingxi sky lanterns is said to trace back to Qing-era residents of these hill villages, who once released the lanterns to signal down the mountain that all was safe — a practice that later grew into the Lantern Festival wishing tradition. The Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival has been ranked by CNN among "the 52 best fresh things worth doing in the world" and listed by National Geographic among the "world's top ten winter travel destinations."
The Taiwan Lantern Festival
The Taiwan Lantern Festival is a major annual event hosted by the Tourism Administration of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, held since 1990 in a different county or city each year. Its main lantern takes the year's zodiac animal as its theme, often reaching tens of meters tall, and is joined by lantern displays of every kind, technology and art lantern zones, international exchange zones, and performances, over a run of about two weeks. The festival's scale and artistry have risen year after year, in recent editions incorporating LED technology, projection mapping, and interactive installation art, drawing millions of visitors from home and abroad and becoming a major brand of Taiwanese tourism.
Distinctive Local Celebrations
Beyond "beehive fireworks in the south, sky lanterns in the north," many unique Lantern Festival events take place across Taiwan:
● Bombing Master Handan in Taitung: devotees hurl firecrackers at the bare-chested, flesh-and-blood Master Handan (played by a real person who stands on a palanquin and bears the barrage), a heart-stopping scene. Master Handan is seen as an incarnation of the God of Wealth, and the fiercer the bombing, the more prosperous the year to come.
● Bombing the Dragon in Miaoli (Bang Long): firecrackers are hurled to "bomb" the dragon-dance teams as they weave and soar amid the dense bursts of firelight, symbolizing the dragon's might and auspiciousness — now listed as an important Hakka cultural celebration.
● Luermen Fireworks in Tainan: a high-altitude fireworks show held by the Orthodox Luermen Shengmu Temple, joining Mazu culture with the Lantern Festival.
● Yeliu Deity-Palanquin Harbor Crossing: fishermen in Yeliu, Wanli District shoulder deity palanquins and leap into the frigid sea to process through the water, praying for safety at sea and a bountiful catch — the "bravest" Lantern Festival event in all Taiwan.
Festival Foods and Culture
On the Lantern Festival people eat tangyuan (glutinous rice balls), for the meaning of "roundness and reunion." Taiwanese tangyuan are mostly filled with peanut, sesame, or red bean, and there are savory versions too (the Hakka savory tangyuan with crown daisy greens is especially famous). The Lantern Festival is also one of the traditional "Chinese Valentine's Days" — in the old days women could seldom go out, and lantern-viewing on this night was a rare chance to do so, so that many gifted scholars and fair maidens met at the lantern displays and made lasting matches. "In the crowd I sought her a thousand times; suddenly I turned, and there she was, where the lantern lights were growing dim" captures the most moving image of a Lantern Festival night.