Pingxi Lantern Festival

To celebrate the end of Chinese New Year, I attended the famous Pingxi lantern festival with a group from school. I had heard a lot about the festival from people at school AND I had seen some pictures, so I knew I wanted to go despite the fact that a few people warned me about the intense crowds...and the possibility of getting trampled. (Considering what I know about crowds in Taiwan, I was actually seriously nervous about this possibility!). Here's a link for more info about the festival: http://www.darrenmelrose.com/blog/?p=354.

Luckily we had fabulous weather for this evening event with clear skies and a warm breeze. The bus ride up to the mountains took about 2 hours because of the heavy traffic - apparently the Saturday night festival is the most popular! The crowds were visible as soon as we arrived at the small town of Pingxi. The other thing that was definitely visible were the lanterns!!! There were already hundreds floating lazily into the sunset.

The first thing we hit up upon arrival was the FOOD STREET. Much like everywhere else in Taiwan, Pingxi was full of food - a Taiwanese specialty!

Yummy quail eggs! These were my first pit stop.

Vicky, Lori, and Linda waiting for their fried squid!

Tubs full of delicious fried things. 

After fully satiating our tummies, we headed off down the crowded street to find the lantern launch site. On our way, we saw TONS of lanterns for sale in all different sizes. Some people buy them at the stores and send them off themselves, but we needed to go to the professionals.

We managed to catch a quiet moment to snap a pic! Notice all the lanterns in the sky in the background!

I wanted to buy all of these...I was envisioning my apartment full of lanterns!

Mini-lanterns! I may or may not have bought a few of these...

Taking a breather before pushing through the crowds to reach the launch site!

After slowly shuffling our way through the crowds, we arrived at the actual site where we could buy lanterns and leave the flames to the experts. I didn't realize that the lanterns would be so huge! The four of us bought two of them and wrote our wishes all over them. Luckily we had Vicky and Linda with us, both of whom speak Mandarin, and they easily ordered our lanterns for us. Lori and I would have been just a little bit lost without the help!

Welcome to the 2012 Pingxi Lantern Festival!

Figuring out what color lanterns to order! We went with pink and purple of course :) 

Getting ready to write my wishes and then send them up into the sky! Hopefully they come true!

The big finale of the night was the stadium show. Every half an hour a large crowd gathered in the stadium to set off over 100 lanterns at a time. The image in the sky was incredible...I honestly have never seen anything quite like it. They looked like giant fireflies in the sky. Definitely worth the trip!

The crew! We stood near the fire truck just in case there were any rouge lanterns.

Crowds anyone? It took people over an hour to get through this crowd, but luckily Linda knew a shortcut so we bypassed the whole thing! Sweet.