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Now what is going on here? There weren't nearly as many people here when I visited one week ago.
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Place is Taoyuan and this picture was taken exactly at 9:51 pm on Friday 19th of March. Two days from now.
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People are making a lot of noise around the place, blowing up stuff, playing drums, gongs and whatever. They also burn lots of ghost money and incence. If you want to find out where it's on, you won't have much trouble.
When we talk about smoke. Today, (that's Sunday,) winds came from north and air from Beijing has been sweeping through Taipei City and County. It's been totally foggy all day. I am quite amazed. I had heard China was pretty polluted, but I had never imagined it being that bad. You can really see it clearly, and the air has been travelling all that way down here. Damn. I'm not going to Beijing ever.
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Back to the topic: Incence smoke. Something.
Lots and lots of people would come here to say a prayer and burn some incence. (Which you'll be handed for free, when you come visit a temple in Taiwan.) Apparently, a number of famous people came too, and would drag more lots of people are them.
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These kids will be dancing a bit later on in their hot suits. Met some of them last week and I was rather surprised at their English skills. Didn't speak a lot with them though, as I at that time was really tired due to flu I suspect.
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Some dragon and hanzi imprinted flag.
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Some time games finally began for reals. A lot of dressed up people would come and pay their respect to the god in that particular temple.
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I wonder how and if they can actually see through those masks.
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Well, they're going to perform a dance, so they better have some coordination whether they can see or not with those big costumes.
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Meanwhile, people are growing busier by the minute with prayers. People had this thing about coming a bit later as they were going to participate in a long walk later on. Just, really, really many people came that time later on, and appareantly, every of them just wanted to say a little prayer first. You'll see some pictures of the many people walking later on and figure out just how trafficked that tiny temple was.
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Now they're dancing. I'm still in doubt of whether they could see or not.
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Then this happened.
Once in a while, incence sticks get really dense and will start burning when many people come to pay their respect to the god. It's a good omen when a fire starts within the incence sticks. It happens often multiple times on special days such as chinese new year, temple-organised events like this and alike.
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This picture is one of my favorites.
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These tiny guys also came to show a little dance for the god.
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A thing that usually follows the incence sticks burning, is people bringing some objects to wave over the fire so as to such up some of the good luck being released.
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Something interesting is about to happen.
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Woo. Chinese Dragon.
In Chinese traditions, the dragon is of great importance as it bring luck amongst other good things. Folklore has multiple mythical creatures of great importance such as the Tiger and Chinese Phoenix, that often appear in relation to temples and religious events, but the dragon is probably by far the most loved for it's lenght, as long things represent luck and long life. (Guess why people eat so much noodle here, eh?)
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Sorry for blurring this photo up.
Dragons are always chasing some sort of balls around here for some reason. I'm not exactly sure why, but definetely going to try and find out some time.
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And off he goes again. Too bad it's so dark here.
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Saw guys like this on many occasions before. Don't remember what kind of guy he is though.
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This is apparently some sort of drunknard. I wonder if he's a god of some sort?
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I think I saw this guy before in Wanhua. I'm not sure if I might be confusing him with another guy.
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And there's this tall red dude from before in action.
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And his green counterpart. Also saw some guys similar to these in Wanhua. I think, first time I've seen them, though, were in Shi Fen during Mid Autumn Festival
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Oh yeah. There's the temple gods ride with neon light and cool stuffs.
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And in there is some really famous woman that I've spotted a few times in television. It's absolutely impossible to get in there.
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These guys are important too. Looks like politicians or some people in city administration perhaps?
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Lots of television crew there I tell you.
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A dozen handfulls of incence sticks coming right up.
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Some guy placed this right next to where I stood and I was driven away pretty effectively. Waaay too much smoke over here man.
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Then this guy is holding a short speech of some sort. Seems more and more like politician I'd say. But he might still just be any guy with a respected place in the society around here.
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Oh yeah.
This is another one of my favorite photos.
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I love colored light like these. Awesome photo I got there, I'd say, while everyone else is focused on other things and not blocking the view completely like they're going to in a few minutes.
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It's now 10:40 and look at all those people that gathered up already. Can't see the end of them from here.
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There's the TV star that everyone crowded around before.
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And while she's talking, journalists are busy interviewing one of her pink-dressed girls.
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Now they're about to go through the final preparations. Gotta have all the stuff ready for the long walk that people are going to start in a moment.
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It's a battlefield out here now.
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This post is getting pretty long, amirite?
Here she's been dancing for a long time after placing lots of stuff inside the cart there. The god should sit as comfortable as possible of course. They're going to be walking for eight days!
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Alllllmoooost!!! Just need to fire a looooong firecracker to make everyone deaf for a while, and we'll finally start walking.
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Yeah! Finally.
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It's a good thing we had all those dragons and stuffs come bring us good luck, because we better have lots of it with all those fireworks blowing up everywhere around us.
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And so it begins. It's 11:30 and people will be walking from Taoyuan to Taichung from now untill next weekend.
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Western religions getting overtaken a bit by eastern religions right here, don't you think? Or at least, these guys organisational abilities are somewhat better than otherplaces. Agree not agree? (By the way, I'm not a religious person. I'm just commenting on how interesting/sensational events these guys can make.)
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Along with all the walking people, a lot of vehicles can be seen. Most notably is probably this truck that apart from being a live lightshow, also played some song about the god who walks from city to city and protects his followers.
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And there's a highway.
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The truck was playing this song rather loud and over and over again, but for some reason it didn't really bother me. I guess the style of the song is really relaxing so it goes well with walking for 8 days I guess.
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Seriously. There were lots of people right before, but where did all the others come from? It seems as if they just doubled in a few minutes.
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It's midnight but people are still out on the streets to see what this ruckus is all about. They're probably used to it.
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It's a pretty long way to go: From Taoyuan to Taichung. So if you get tired, you can also find these trucks all around the place, picking people up. Might be more interesting to ride these if you're speaking Mandarin and even better: Taiwanese, as you'll be spending a lot of time waiting for the car to go off.
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Well. Good luck guys. I'm sure you're going to have a bunch of fun walking all those miles.
They'll be walking untill early morning where they'll find some place to rest untill next night. Now: These guys walk slow (they have short legs and don't exercise much.) So if I'd want to go with them, it probably wouldn't be a really extreme physical test. Actually, it's a really special feeling just walking there with all those people and things going on along the road in the middle of the night. I really understand why these guys like to do this. But I'm not exactly fluent in Chinese, so there probably will be a rather limited number of things to talk through for 8 days of walking, and I'd like to go back to Chihlee during the next week, so I'm passing for this time.
They're still walking by the time I'm writing this and will be doing so for a week, so be sure to watch out for them if you live somewhere between Taoyuan and Taichung. (Or, perhaps they'll show up on the news, don't you think?)
Gooood Night! * phew *