Now that is something the Fabulosity Meter would definitely approve of.

But having that much fun has created all sorts of environmental problems, and Taiwan is desperately trying to change the Sky Lantern Festival into the Lantern Festival, sneakily removing the word “Sky” from the title

So when we go and look at Taipei’s Lantern Festival it looks like this

Some of it is quite beautiful

Some of it is quite strange

Some of it way too cute

And some of it way too commercial

And some of it just out of place

But the excitement and spectacle has gone. None of it is the SKY Lantern Festival.

I want to see that.

There are only a couple of places now where releasing the lanterns into the sky is still allowed and one is Shifen, a small village about an hour out of Taipei. We have missed the actual day of the Festival, which by the look of the photo introducing this blog, would be just too crazy, but we can still go to Shifen and release a lantern into the sky.

It is pouring with rain, but I am undaunted. I want to do this.

Shifen is basically a coal mining town which seems to go well with the cold grey day.

A jumble of ramshackle houses with a train line running through the middle would not have attracted a single tourist in the last century. But by 1970’s the coal mines had all shut down and the townsfolk were desperate.

Meetings were held, ideas were brought up and discarded. No one could think of a way to save the town from neglect and the townsfolk from poverty.

Until ………………………………

Some unnamed hero remembered the early days when sky lanterns were released near the railway station as a signal telling those hiding in the mountains from ransacking marauders that it was now safe to return to the village. After a while they started adding messages to the lanterns asking the gods for help. Could something be done with that?

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Trains still run through the town

But now they carry tourists, not coal.

And the tourists come by the thousand.

With just one thought in mind.

They want to release a lantern.

And so do we.

But first we have to write a message on the lantern

We know exactly what we want to wish for.

Then we take it to the railway line

and light a small bundle of paper inside it to create enough hot air to cause the lantern to rise and float away into the sky. Our wish is important and requires urgent action.

Will the lantern gods be able to help.

Only time will tell.