AmCham arrow Publications arrow Topics Archive arrow Topics Archive 2005 arrow Vol.35- No.10 arrow Taiwan Culture: Festivals in Taiwan ? A Non-stop Series of Celebrations
Taiwan Culture: Festivals in Taiwan ? A Non-stop Series of Celebrations PDF Print E-mail

From major holidays like Chinese New Year and the Dragon Boat Festival through a variety of local events, there's always something exciting going on somewhere on the island.

BY EARL WIEMAN

 

Like other people all over the world, the Taiwanese have regulated their lives by festivals from time immemorial. But the system of traditional Taiwanese festivals - most of which derive from the practices of China's southern Fujian province, where the ancestors of most Taiwanese originated - is more intricate than most. Festivals large and small fill the lunar calendar - not only major events such as the Lunar New Year, Lantern Festival, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, and Ghost Festival, but also a huge number of smaller, mostly localized celebrations. In Taiwan, in fact, you can see a minor celebration every 15 days, on the second and 16th of each lunar month, when business establishments burn incense and spirit money (and sometimes set out sacrifices of food and drink) in front of their doorways to appease the deities and assure safe and prosperous times. Families of a traditional bent have a simple observance (and usually eat vegetarian food) on the first and 15th.

Most of Taiwan's people are intensely religious, and the birthday of one of their deities - Buddhist, Taoist, Confucian, or folk - is cause for frenetic activity. Most frenetic of all is the birthday of Mazu (also spelled Matsu), Goddess of the Sea, on the 23rd day of the third lunar month, and the most frenzied of all the Mazu "birthday parties" (each of Taiwan's hundreds of Mazu temples has its own) is a week-long procession in which thousands of devotees on foot follow an image of the goddess from Jhenlan Temple in Dajia, near Taichung, on a journey south to a "mother temple" at Singang on the island's southwest coast.

Once there, the celebrations become more feverish than ever in an almost unimaginable burst of activity that includes solemn Taoist rituals, inspection tours by the gods, demonstrations by fantastically dressed and made-up martial arts teams, rural skits by local performing groups, self-flagellations by possessed spirit mediums, Taiwanese opera shows, mountains of exploding firecrackers, and much else.

The island's festival scene is enriched even more by the traditional celebrations of its 12 tribes of indigenous peoples. The best-known of their events is the harvest festival of the Amis tribe on the east coast; this takes place in July and August, with each village setting its own festival dates. Other prominent aborigine festivals include the Flying Fish Festival of the Yami tribe on Orchid Island, the Sacrifice to the Short Spirits of the Saisiat Tribe, the Zou Tribe Life Bean Festival, and the Rukai Tribe Black Rice Festival.

A few years ago the Tourism Bureau decided to capitalize on the cultural and tourist resources of Taiwan's different areas by "adopting" local festivals, organizing and upgrading them, and promoting them internationally. The result is such events as the Festival of Austronesian and Indigenous Formosan Cultures in Taitung, the Hualien International Stone Sculpting Art Festival, the Sanyi Wood Sculpture Festival, the Yingge International Pottery and Ceramics Festival, the Kenting Wind Bell Festival, the Ilan International Children's Folklore and Folkgame Festival, and the Neimen Songjiang Battle Array. Many of these festivals do, in fact, have a significant international participation, and some have an academic as well as celebratory function.

Local governments have caught the festival fever, and are organizing so many of their own festivals that there is almost a festive event taking place in Taiwan every day of the year. Themes of these events include music at Chengching Lake in Kaohsiung, flowers in Changhua and Nantou Counties, bluefin tuna in Pingtung County, cormorants on Kinmen island, Hakka cuisine in Miaoli, Buddhist culture in Changhua, coffee in Gukeng, swimming and fireworks at Sun Moon Lake, fireworks and fish in Penghu, miscanthus flowers along the Caoling Historic Trail, peach blossoms, butterflies, skydiving, biking, camping, even salt. You name it, it seems, and Taiwan has a festival for it.

Three traditional events, however, continue to dominate the Taiwanese festival calendar and exert the strongest allure for local residents and visitors alike - the Chinese Lunar New Year (and the accompanying Lantern Festival two weeks later), the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth lunar month, and the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. These are the festivals that are celebrated by everyone in Taiwan, wherever they live on the island.



Happy New Year!

The Lunar New Year is the biggest celebration of all. In the old days the festivities went on for a full two weeks, and even until quite recently they brought a near-total three-day shutdown of practically all business and government work in Taiwan. But the operations that shut down are getting fewer, and the time they stay shut is getting shorter.

Nevertheless, the Lunar New Year remains the most important festival on the Chinese calendar. It is a time when people return to their ancestral homes, and Taipei city (along with other major cities) largely empties out as residents leave to visit their old homes to the south or in the countryside. The whole island, it seems, is traveling, and to get anywhere outside the cities becomes a real chore. Airline and train seats are sold out weeks in advance, and the highways become clogged with traffic. Inside the cities, by contrast, traffic is sparse and moving about becomes a pleasant experience.

This is family time. Members of families make great efforts to be home for the traditional New Year's Eve dinner, although doors are no longer sealed off against the rampaging nian beast, thought to consume people unfortunate enough to be caught abroad on this night. The beast disappears with the dawn, and even today the first thing that someone says upon seeing you for the first time in the new year is Gongsi or "Congratulations!" Congratulations for having survived the night.

As midnight approaches on New Year's Eve, the sound of exploding firecrackers becomes incessant as people shoot off strings of the explosives to blast away bad luck (and frighten off the nian beast). Children are especially joyful on New Year's Day and the days following, because they get new clothing to wear and elders feel obliged to present them with "red envelopes" containing money. On the first day of the new year, everybody goes about visiting everybody else. Businesses that have closed down generally reopen in three to five days, always to the cacophonous sounds of exploding firecrackers.

Traditionally, the Lunar New Year season ends only after two weeks, at the time of the first full moon of the year. This is the Lantern Festival, when children used to parade around the streets carrying lanterns (originally, the legend goes, to help look for spirits in the air). Now everybody troops to designated venues where Lantern Festival exhibitions are held with huge numbers of hand-made lanterns, international lantern displays, and electromechanical "lantern floats" that often illustrate moral tales from Chinese history and mythology. Many of the lanterns are modeled on the Chinese zodiacal animal of the year.

All sorts of peripheral events are held at the time of the Lantern Festival, most notably the "heavenly lanterns" of Pingsi and the "beehive rockets" of Yanshuei. The former is by far the gentler and safer of the two, as people in the northern Taiwan town of Pingsi send paper hot-air balloons, powered by burning wads of waxed paper, soaring into the night sky. These "heavenly lanterns" are said to have been used originally as a signal of safety; now, they usually carry written wishes for good fortune and the like. Hundreds of these lanterns rising into the darkness are a sight never to be forgotten.

In the southern town of Yanshuei, hundreds of thousands of skyrockets are shot off, mostly horizontally, from racks that resemble beehives - hence the name of the event. Legend has it that this was originally done in a desperate attempt to drive off pestilence. It worked, and so the practice has been continued to this day. Visitors who wish to witness this spectacular display of pyrotechnics are advised to wear layers of thick clothing and motorcycle helmets. Injuries are not uncommon.

The Dragon Boat Festival has evolved out of a tragic event that took place back during the Warring States period (403-222 B.C.), when a loyal statesman named Chu Yuan drowned himself in a river because his sovereign gave ear only to the self-seeking entreaties of sycophants and refused to follow Chu Yuan's sincere and sage advice. (If politicians in Taiwan today had Chu Yuan's integrity, the Danshuei River might be clogged with bodies.) Hearing of the sad event, local people rushed out in their boats in an attempt to save Chu Yuan (or, alternatively, to find his body); when that failed, they threw rice wrapped in bamboo leaves into the water to attract the fish away from Chu's body (or, alternatively, to nourish his spirit). Thus the dragon boat races were born. In Taiwan, the races take place at numerous sites - most notably in Taipei, Lugang, Tainan, and Kaohsiung - and some of them have become international events with participation by teams from all over the world. Taipei alone has a number of competition venues: on the Keelung River, the Danshui River, and at Bitan (Green Lake) in the suburb of Sindian. The boats with their dragon heads and tails are carried to the water, the oarsmen propel them frantically forward to the ever-quickening tempo of the coxswain's drum, and the designated person strains over the bow to capture the banner that marks the finish line. Everybody eats zongzi, the food of the season; these are leaf-wrapped rice dumplings stuffed with pork, bean paste, or other ingredients, and they remind everyone of the rice that was tossed in the river when Chu Yuan died so long ago.

The last of the "Big Three" celebrations is the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, held at the time of the full moon (of course) in the middle of the eighth lunar month. This is the most romantic of the three; families gather and lovers meet, preferably on the bank of a body of water, for a night of barbecue, moon cakes, and gazing at the moon and its reflection in the water. Weather permitting, of course. Other foods of the season include pomelos and anything else that is round like the moon. This is the time when everybody remembers the legends of Chang E, the Maid in the Moon, who was once a terrestrial but floated away to the lunar orb when she stole and consumed her husband's elixir of life.

These are only the Big Three. As mentioned earlier, Taiwan has a festival for just about every occasion, every theme, every taste, every day. For the latest on the island's festivals, check the Tourism Bureau website at http://taiwan.net.tw.
 
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