Bright Lights, Small Town-Pinghsi's Sky Lanterns

According to legend, when a swan from Heaven was shot down by a hunter's arrow, it so enraged the gods and fairies that they decided to wipe out the world of men on the 15th day of the first lunar month. But one fairy, feeling sorry for people, warned them of their impending doom. As a result, they hung up red lanterns and lit firecrackers to fool the denizens of Heaven into thinking that the destruction was already taking place. People were thus able to avoid calamity. This is the legend behind the romantic holiday of the Lantern Festival.

The custom of hanging lanterns and eating tangyuan (sweet glutinous rice balls) comes originally from central China, but Taiwan also has many of its own unique folk activities connected with the holiday. Two are particularly famous: the lighting of fireworks and firecrackers in Yenshui and the launching of sky lanterns in Pinghsi. The former dates back to the era of Zheng Chenggong (Koxinga), who led Ming dynasty loyalists to Taiwan during the early Qing dynasty. The people of Yenshui originally set them off to drive away the evil spirits responsible for an epidemic. The sky lanterns of Pinghsi, on the other hand, were used by early residents to convey the message that all was at peace and safe from bandits. Both of them with roots in the hard lives of the early Han settlers in Taiwan, these folk activities have become two of the most important celebrations that take place in Taiwan during the Lantern Festival.

One lantern after another floats up into the night sky, bringing an incomparable sense of joy and peace. Pinghsi's Sky Lantern Festival is one of Taiwan's most popular folk activities connected to the Lantern Festival. (photo by Tsai Si)

Ancient cell phones

Sky lanterns can be traced back to the Three Kingdoms era (221-265), when armies employed them as signaling devices. They are also known as "Kong Ming" lanterns, after the brilliant military strategist of the era (also known as Zhuge Liang), who sent them skyward at night to confuse rival general Sima Yi's astrological divinations. Later they were adopted by the common folk, who used them to convey their wishes to Heaven.

To construct a sky lantern, you must first cut a strip of bamboo and bend it into a circle, which you then crisscross with wire. It used to be that sky lanterns were covered with four connected sheets of paper, and then completed with a lid over the top. This type looks a lot like an old-style mandarin's hat. But with gradual improvements the standard model has now come to be constructed out of four sheets of rice paper that are shaped like pointed leaves so that they can be joined together at the top without the need for a lid. Before launching a sky lantern, you must soak about 15 sheets of spirit money in kerosene and vegetable oil for about 20 minutes, before placing them in the wire in the middle of the lantern's frame. You then spread open the wad of saturated spirit money and light in on fire. When the air inside of the lantern heats up, it grows lighter than the air around it and the lantern begins to rise. It's the same principle employed by hot air balloons.

Why is that people hang up colorful lanterns for the Lantern Festival all over Taiwan, but only launch sky lanterns in Pinghsi? "The early residents launched them for the same reason that Kong Ming did: to signal others," declares Li Wen-chuan, director of the Pinghsi Railway Historical Association. "Sky lanterns were the cell phones of the era!" During the rule of the Daoguang emperor in the Qing dynasty (1821-1851), settlers came from Anxi and Huian in Fujian Province to the Shihfenliao area of Pinghsi. Times were hard, and at the end of the year and during the New Year's holidays, bandit gangs would maraud and plunder. At this time every year, the women, children, elderly and infirm of Shihfen would lug their belongings to the hills and hide. After the Lantern Festival had passed, the men guarding the homes would send lanterns skyward to signal that all was at peace and beckon their fellow villagers homeward. From this arose the custom of launching sky lanterns. "In fact, the tradition of launching sky lanterns originated only in the villages of Shihfen and Nanshan," notes Hu Min-shu, director of the Sky Lantern Association. "They would launch them on either side of the Keelung River. Back then, the other villages of Pinghsi didn't know what sky lanterns were."

"On a winter night in the mountains, a thousand lanterns rise...."Pinghsi's soaring lanterns have made it an international scenic spot, but along with the fame have come new problems to ponder. (photo by Chi Yueh)

Sky lantern enthusiast

You can't talk about Pinghsi's Sky Lantern Festival without mentioning Hu Min-shu, who is largely responsible for promoting and popularizing Shihfen's sky lantern traditions. "Although I'm only some 50 years old today, I have 40 years experience of playing with sky lanterns." Recalling the sky lantern days of his youth, Hu recalls how whole families-the young and the old alike-would gather together to build sky lanterns. It was a big part of celebrating the Lantern Festival. On that day, the adults would go to the mountains early in the morning and cut bamboo for the frames. Since it was hard to acquire large sheets of paper, "Sky lanterns used to be only about two and a half feet wide," says Hu. "A far cry from today, when even the smallest are four feet across."

When Hu was a kid, he would rack his brain for ways to acquire large sheets of paper that allowed light to pass through. He eventually discovered that the paper most suitable for sky lanterns was the kind used under the steamed turtle buns presented as an offering to the Lord of Heaven on the ninth day of the first lunar month. And so every year on the eve of the Lantern Festival he would volunteer to work at the local cake shop in exchange for a few sheets of uncut white paper.

Back then, you would make only a single lantern, and since the quality of the materials wasn't up to today's standards, there was a high rate of failure. Successfully sending a lantern heavenward, however, would fill you with pride. That Hu was able to successfully and single-handedly launch a sky lantern when he was just ten bears witness to his enthusiasm and determination.

The villages of Shihfen and Nanshan, which face each other across the Keelung River, would compete in launching sky lanterns. In a good year, the two villages combined might send 30 lanterns skyward. "We really treasured the lanterns and would chase after them, trying to figure out where they landed," Hu recalls. "It didn't matter if they landed in the hills or on the riverbank or even in a cesspool, we'd take them back and send them off again. One year, I launched my sky lantern six times."

Kids love the Sky Lantern Festival. Here a couple of college students conveys their wishes to transfer to another department. (photo by Tsai Si)

Let there be light

By 1993 Hu was in Taipei managing a restaurant, but he was still enraptured with sky lanterns, and so with 20 young people he organized the "Taipei County Sky Lantern Folk Culture Association." Each of the members spent time and money to construct paper sky lanterns according to particular specifications, and then got relatives and friends to gather at Shihfen Elementary School during the Lantern Festival in the hope that the tradition of launching sky lanterns wouldn't entirely die out.

The association was launching more than 100 lanterns at once, and with the help of the news media, word of the event traveled fast. "In 1994 tens of thousands of people came, but Shihfen couldn't feed them all, and traffic was paralyzed," says Hu, recalling the period when Pinghsi's lanterns first began to get a lot of attention. What had only been a folk tradition in Shihfen and Nanshan became an important event for all of Pinghsi.

Once the local government got involved, the annual Sky Lantern Festival really hit the big time. In 1999, with the memory of the previous year's September 21 earthquake fresh and the millennium looming, the theme for the festival became "prayers for the victims of the earthquake and for world peace." Lantern makers constructed a 200-kilo sky lantern that stood 18.9 meters high (as tall as a six-story building) that made it into the Guinness Book of World Records and garnered television news reports in 63 nations. The Pinghsi Sky Lantern Festival became one of the three major lantern festivals planned by the Tourism Bureau of the Ministry of Transportation and Communications. The Bureau specially created a commercial about Pinghsi's railway and lantern festival and aired it on various major Japanese television stations. The festival has now become one of Taiwan's most representative cultural festivals.

The custom of launching sky lanterns,once on the brink of extinction, has now once again come very much to life. And it's no longer just the members of the Sky Lantern Association who take painstaking efforts to construct large lanterns. Children at every Pinghsi elementary school and junior high become experts at the craft, and once they master the requisite skills they go to schools in other areas to instruct their students. "Sky lanterns are the pride of Pinghsi," Li Wen-hsuan declares. "For us the Lantern Festival is nearly as important as Chinese New Year. And some families are even holding their major family gathering during the Lantern Festival instead of Chinese New Year's!"

With the economy on the skids, playing the lottery is all the rage, which perhaps explains why "Winning on Every Gamble" was the favorite phrase sent heavenward on this Sky Lantern Festival. (photo by Chi Yueh)

A folk custom goes big time

In recent years, with growing understanding about the importance of cultural industries, localities and government agencies have begun to look toward cultural activities and folk festivals as a means both to put a place on the map and to bring in money. Certain local festivals have been put on in an ever-grander manner so that they have become major celebrations for the whole nation, or even indexes of Taiwan's cosmopolitanism. Among this group of festivals are Ilan's Children's Folklore and Folk Game Festival, Meinung's Yellow Butterfly Festival, Sanyi's Wood Carving Festival, and of course Yenshui's Fireworks Festival and Pinghsi's Sky Lantern Festival.

By packing in the crowds, the festivals do more than bring in waves of people and money. For example, Pinghsi, which has a resident population of only 5,000, has several hundred thousand tourists arrive for the festival. With the resulting business opportunities, some of the young people who had left the village return, and Shihfen's sleepy old streets come to life again. In one restaurant near the Shihfen Train Station, more than ten members of the owner's extended family came home this Lantern Festival to wait tables. It's practically the whole clan. Of the shops and stalls that sell sky lanterns during the Lantern Festival, those with the best locations can make as much as NT$300,000, and even the worst performers pull in NT$50,000. For Pinghsi Rural Township, where the streets are usually empty, the Lantern Festival represents a once-in-a-year chance to make good money. Whether they're selling sky lanterns or preparing food, the locals don't seem to object to the three days of special traffic restrictions, because, as one stall owner puts it, "The more people come, the more money comes."

With regard to these locals who are cashing in on the town's one moment in the spotlight, cultural critic Chen Pan offers a different take. "There's nothing wrong with a carnival-like atmosphere," Chen says, "but if the locality isn't well enough prepared or is too eager to attract crowds and cash, it can end up consuming its own moment." The cultural industry shouldn't just be about business opportunities.

Chen holds that Pinghsi Rural Township, without any kind of community organization or rules, is unprepared for the scale of its Sky Lantern Festival. It is powerless to stop people coming from the outside to open up stalls. And apart from not offering any special local delicacies, the restaurants and food stalls simply offer poor quality food. "The Sky Lantern Festival ought to be more deeply tied to the locality," says Chen. "The area ought to reconsider what makes it special, and confidently use the festival as a means to engage in a dialogue with the outside world."

After the festival, skeletons of sky lanterns are littered everywhere in Pinghsi-in the trees, along the riverbanks, in the fields, and on the railway tracks. Some of those who live near the launching area spend all night with bamboo staffs in their hands, ready to prevent errant lanterns from causing fires.

This year marked a special innovation for Pinghsi's Sky Lantern Festival, as Western Valentine's Day fell between the Lord of Heaven celebration on the ninth day of the first lunar month and the traditional Lantern Festival on the fifteenth. Pinghsi expanded its Sky Lantern Festival into a carnival embracing all three. From February 8 to February 15, the Taipei County Tourism Association offered in-depth Sky Lantern Travel Tours. Visitors were brought in on the train, shown outstanding examples of local architecture such as the Taitzu Hotel, and taken to the old Chingtung Coal Processing plant, Shihfen's "Old Street" and the Taiwan Coal Industry Museum. They were also, of course, given an introduction to the manufacture of sky lanterns. The idea was to use the Sky Lantern Festival to lead people to discover Pinghsi's natural and cultural beauty.

On February 8, on the eve of the lunar calendar's Lord of Heaven celebration, the high-pitched blasts of the trumpet-like suona and the low-pitched clangs of the gongs broke the silence of the night, with Pinghsi's Nanchi Community beiguan music troupe and its Fuhsing Community gong and drum troupe kicking off the introduction to Pinghsi's 2003 Sky Lantern Festival. President Chen Shui-bian specially came to release a sky lantern upon which was written his wish for a more clement meteorological and political climate: "More rain, less saliva." At 11:00 p.m., everyone set off firecrackers to celebrate the Lord of Heaven's birthday. Some visitors who had made the pilgrimage from Keelung and Taipei simultaneously released some 200 sky lanterns.

Sunday the 15th was the traditional Chinese Lantern Festival, following immediately Western Valentine's Day on Saturday the 14th. On Valentine's Day, apart from launching sky lanterns in the traditional white, celebrants also released some pink lanterns representing joy and yellow lanterns representing passion, which made the scene of lanterns in the sky just that much sweeter and more colorful. In an especially touching moment, one suitor launched his wedding proposal on a 3.6-meter sky lantern. His girlfriend then demurely conveyed her consent on another.

Unlike traditional Lantern Festival celebrations, the Sky Lantern Festival in Pinghsi put young people front and center this year. Liang Ching-ju, Li Wei, Wan Fang, Li Hsin-liang, Kuang Liang and other young pop stars performed, sending basslines blasting skyward to join the lanterns.

"When the sky lanterns themselves only account for 5% of an NT$6 million budget, I think the organizers are leaning in the wrong direction," says Hu Min-shih. Adding singing and dancing may make the celebration more festive, but Hu wishes that the responsible county agencies would spend more on the actual construction and release of sky lanterns, since they are after all the true leading lights of the festival.

"On a winter night in the mountains, a thousand lamps rise. . . ." When many hundreds of sky lanterns rise heavenward amid the mountains of Pingshi, the beautiful and peaceful scene naturally kindles great hopes for the new year. For the sponsoring county government and the citizens of Pinghsi, the sky lanterns must be conveying something more than just prayers for greater crowds and a larger revenue stream.

The big pop concerts really pump up the excitement level for young people. But as the number of activities grows, each may lose some of its individual ability to move people. By acquiring a carnival atmosphere, is the Sky Lantern Festival gradually drifting away from its original mood of peace and tranquility? (photo by Tsai Si)

With the arrival of the Sky Lantern Festival, people throng aboard the Pinghsi Line to join in the merry-making and to catch a glimpse of Pinghsi's natural and cultural beauty. (photo by Chi Yueh)

People of all ages come out to piously inscribe their wishes for the new year on the sky lanterns. (photo by Chi Yueh)