Lantern Festival 2008

Today, people in Taiwan celebrate the Lantern Festival. Chinese tradition says that at the very beginning of a new year, when there is a bright full moon hanging in the sky for the first time in the new year, there should be thousands of colorful lanterns hung out for people to appreciate.
In Taipei, they have a large exhibition of these laterns near the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, which is on display for several days. Yesterday, we went to see them. The lanterns are often several meters large constructs of figures or buildings, which are illuminated from inside. Most of the lantern adopted the theme of the Year of the Mouse (or Rat - the Chinese only knows one character for mouse and rat). In a way, they have something in common with the Zugslaternen of the Basler Fasnacht.

Some have traditional motives like this one, where mice are carrying a dragon (right) and a lion (left):

A dragon boat race:

A wedding procession accompanying the bride, who is carried in the palanquin to the groom's house:

Others display religious contents. Here, the Goddess of the Sea watches over the fisherboats:


We also found a Christian nativity scene:














There are different modern themes, too:


And also some beautifully painted smaller lanterns:


Here is the one Micha likes most:

(By the way, the weather got much nicer in the last days and we have had now some dry days with even sunshine and 20 degrees Celcius! Let's hope that we now can store away our heater and the woolen caps.)