Lantern Festival

The other night Jeff and I drove out to Cumberland to see the festivities starting the second annual Taiwanese Lantern Festival.

The lanterns are being loaned to Cumberland by the Taiwanese Cultural Festival in Taiwan, and this village will be the only place they will be seen in British Columbia. They drew 12,000 people last year!

Tonight the street and shops were decorated with paper lanterns; the trees hung with red lucky money.

At one shop, I stopped to ask what the significance of the skewered lettuce hanging in the doorway. The proprietor told me that, traditionally, leafy vegetables like cabbage and lettuce attracted dragons . If the dragon dancing in the parade is attracted to your hanging vegetable, you can put a coin in its mouth and it will bestow prosperity upon your business in the coming year.

You learn something new every day. Traditionally, I thought dragons were attracted to hanging slabs of meat (possibly clad in armour), and possibly a big pile of gold coins. Alas, the dragons in my mind were merely being a little Euro-centric, and I much prefer the thought of gigantic dancing reptiles as being vegetarians.

The parade itself was very short, and like Vancouver's participatory Parade of Lost Souls was mainly a procession of hundreds of people people swinging home-made lanterns and carrying noise-makers down to the park where sky-lanterns would soon be released.

There was a lot of people here tonight. We were fortunate that we wiggled our way up to the front where the few microphones were. We could actually see and hear Tsunda-la (one of the local Buddhist lamas) blessing the event with chanting and the ringing of bells, and hear the singing by the Cantiamo choir.

I'm not so sure that the crowds of people milling all through the park could hear anything of the sort, but if that was so then they also missed the stultifyingly long announcements of the names of about a bazillion visiting dignitaries and local sponsors and politicians, for which they are blessed.

At each sponsor's name there was indeed a rousing cheer, but from the mutterings I heard around me in the audience people were just trying to stay warm in the freezing temperatures by yelling and jumping up and down. It was however entertaining to see that one of our local (and less-loved) politicians appeared to have a large and comical lizard made of paper sitting on his head.

The release of the sky-lanterns was quite beautiful. They floated up into the clear night sky like wobbly, ethereal UFOs, lit serenely from within, until they got smaller and smaller and winked out.

But we didn't stay for the rest of the entertainment, even though the big Taiko drums were starting up. It's not really characteristic of me to leave before the free entertainment is over, butI was just too cold. It was well below zero tonight and my nose and cheeks and toes felt numb. Next year, I'm putting on another pair of socks.

I have included some photos here of the lanterns I saw last year at the first lantern festival. They have travelled a long way and are a rather magical sight. They can be seen all this week in the Cumberland rec centre, until February 26th.

I think I'd like to see them again this year. They have added another fifty lanterns to the display from Taiwan, bringing the total to 130. It's quite a sight.

I think my favourite lantern was the life-sized ancient Chinese warrior mounted on horseback.