The festivities for the Lunar New Year end with the first full moon of the new year, which is called Lantern Festival, or Yuan Xiao.
Everyone at my school asked to make sure I was going to the nearby celebration of Lantern Festival-- they promised great food, good music, and huge fireworks displays. The Festival was the biggest I've gone to yet, and gave me some serious large-crowd-anxiety, but it was great! I had some delicious fried shrimp cake and the best fireworks show I've ever seen. The locals said it wasn't as good as other years, but all the Americans agreed that it was the best show we've ever seen.
Also, my personal highlight was writing on and floating a "sky lantern." These are large paper lanterns, which people write wishes on for the year. They then set a fire with ghost money at the base of the lantern (like a hot air balloon) and float them into the night. Here are some pictures from the evening.
Me and my shrimp cake. You can't see that both me and the shrimp (whole, still in its shell, and fried) are looking at you.
Getting ready to float the sky lantern (full chronology of the sky lantern life cycle to come)....and a few of the fireworks, plus a lantern! These fireworks were HUGE. The small ones you see here are the size of normal US fireworks.
1 comment:
Wow ! You've been busy! Good to see you're enjoying the island a bit. There is a story about Corey and shrimp as well, so shrimp stories runs in the family! The museums sound right your alley as well - although I admit I'm most interested in the fireworks. Grucci sounds like they don't hold a candle to them - pardon my pun!
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