Being Run Over by a God
My fellow Kaohsiungese friend, Pieter Vorster, inspired me to drive to YanShuei for the local version of the lantern festival. The Lantern Festival occurs a few weeks after Chinese New Year, and under normal circumstances is painted with the imagery of a sea of children running along public grounds with handheld lanterns lit by tea candles. Contrastingly in YanShuei, the town celebrates the worship of the war gods with an open invitation to fire off as many bottle rockets as possible …. at the attendees.
The ceremony: there are about 8 temples in YanShuei, each housing the various gods from polydeist Taoism. During this festival, carriages with pro wrestling-like metal cages encases the traveling god, and is taken to each of the other temples in town for "a visit". Each temple honors each visiting god with a pyromaniacal display of fireworks. A typical set up is a shelf 5 foot in height, lined with rockets side by side on multiple shelves pointed outwards on all four sides. Attendees rush up and surround the rocket tower with only but a few feet of distance and POW! Fireworks are shot simultaneously from the center of the tower into the sky and chains of firecrackers are lit under our feet.
Five of us, wearing standard protective gear including a full motorcycle helmet, gloves, heavy jacket and pants, and a towel wrapped around our necks are allowed to charge with thousands of other attendees dressed in the same fashion, at walls of bottle rockets fired directly at us. The biggest one featured a wall of 250,000 rockets fired into the crowd underneath a waterfall of sparklers. Pieter and I ran in front of a god carriage as 3 chains of firecrackers went off under our feet. The carriage pushed through the crowd at high speed and flattened 10 people. We crawled out from under with firecrackers bursting around us. The war god givith no mercy.
YanShuei for the evening looked like Sarajevo under seige. Across the horizon hundreds of fireworks go up simultaneously like anti-aircraft guns. The constant bursts of explosives surrounding us rang in our ears until the next day. For those who wore synthetic jackets, the rockets melted holes to mark scars of war.
The siege began at 630p and ended at 2am. 8+ hours in total. Spain may having the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. New Orleans may have Mardi Gras. Only in Taiwan can one charge at 250,000 bottle rockets. One fond tip: follow the fire engines because you know something big is going to explode. YanShuei 2007 is an open invitation for those tempted, or just plain crazy, like us.
