Mikhail Kotykhov
Can Speak English
Published in
3 min readMar 7, 2016

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Lantern Festival in Taiwan

Emily, could you tell us more about the Lantern Festival in Taiwan?

The Lantern Festival is on the 15th day
of the 1st lunar month of the year.
We usually eat Tangyuans (湯圓)
and hang up lanterns on this day.
Our government also organizes festival events.
There are many big lanterns on display.

What can we see during the festival?

We have a few different festival activities.
One is called “Releasing Lanterns into the Sky” (放天燈).
This one happens in Pingxi, New Taipei City.
And the other one is “Yanshui Beehive Fireworks” (鹽水蜂炮).
We can watch it in Tainan City.

I see.

The Lantern Festival is at the end of the Chinese New Year vacation.
We have the main festival lantern.
It was illuminated last night.
Many people criticized it.
But after the illumination there were many compliments.
The interesting thing is that at the end of the light show,
they displayed all of the criticism to the show in Chinese.
It was a surprise, many people were laughing.
The person who appeared in this show was the mayor of Taipei City.
He was the one to receive most criticism.

Who is organizing the festival?

The lantern displays are organized by the government and the community.
Many students are participating,
including the elementary school students.
“The Journey to The West” is a famous ancient Chinese novel.
The main character of this novel is a monkey.
It’s the year of monkey.
People make lanterns that are related to the monkey or that novel.
The tallest building in my city is called “Taipei 101”,
so people also like to make lanterns with it.

Can you see the festival everywhere in Taiwan?

In Taiwan, many cities have their own Lantern Festival.
Actually, every year we choose one city
as the main venue for the Lantern Festival.
The government will compensate the festival expenses to the city.
In 2016, the main Lantern Festival was in Taoyuan city.

Thanks so much, Emily.

You’re welcome.

Photos by Emily Chang

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Mikhail Kotykhov
Can Speak English

Learn a language by speaking it. Learn a skill by using it.