Ring in the Dragon,Light up the Lanterns

On the night of the lantern festival last year, the flower market was lit up as bright as day. People met in the dusk as the moon rose over the tree tops." So wrote the Song dynasty poetess Zhu Shuzhen. A thousand years ago, in the Chinese capital of Kaifeng, red silk lanterns were hung high on the castle walls. Inside the temples there were rows of "poem lanterns," which held extractable blocks of wood on which were carved riddles written in verse.

Meanwhile, music tents released melodies from stringed instruments to waft on the breeze. What an elegant scene! Women in finely embroidered new clothes walked the streets enjoying the performers hired out by local merchants. The lanterns stretching one after another into the distance emitted hazy candlelight, by which many a gifted scholar would dally with his love. . . .

After the turn of the third millenium, both the official Taipei Lantern Festival celebrations and the city's pedestrians, their usually hurried steps slowed, brought to mind those romantic scenes of 1000 years before. The streets were lined with lanterns hung with cards upon which citizens wrote their wishes. The main lantern, the Millenium Gold Dragon, was positioned at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, and beyond the walls enclosing its grounds were lanterns in the shape of Hello Kitty, a woman's face, the eight immortals crossing the seas, and so forth-a delicious mix of new and old.

Coming one after another, their lights flickering, these lanterns are auspicious for giving birth to a son, and they brighten the way for pedestrians at night and hold out hope that their wishes will be granted. Let me make one here: "Offering a gold dragon to the millenium, may all good things come to the people."