Over a month ago, I was invited to go to Yenshui Fireworks Festival which was supposed to be "fun". During the late 19th century, fireworks were believed to be useful for warding off evil spirits and were also used as a cry for help from good spirits. This was especially practiced at the time because of serious cholera epidemics that were wreaking havoc in the villages of Yenshui. Now, this practice is still held not because of cholera, but for folk belief and tradition. It has also become such a grand event that it attracts tourists from all over Taiwan and is starting to gain worldwide attention (though I never even heard or imagined such an event until now). In order to commemorate this event, hundreds to thousands of people gather in Yenshui for a two day festival in which the fireworks part is the main highlight. It's also the only part I went to. I should also mention in case you didn't know, the Chinese are the great inventors of gunpowder and consequently fireworks. Which to me, explains their fire obsessions.
Before arriving in Yenshui, I was told that fireworks would be coming at me from all angles so I should properly prepare myself. This meant, I should wear thicker clothing to wear underneath, some sort of outer protection that I wouldn't mind getting damaged, sturdy shoes, lots of duct tape, a full face helmet and towels. So I wore jeans, a longsleeve shirt, a hoodie and long socks that went over my jeans to my knees. Over all this I wore a complete rain outfit made of PVC material (jacket and matching pants) which I picked up at the hardware store. I also picked up a full face motorcycle helmet and duct taped a bath towel completely around the bottom of the helmet. This was to insure that no stray fireworks would travel inside my helmet and blow up (happens every year). I also saw many others duct taping the bottom of their pant legs to their shoes so that fireworks wouldn't travel up their pants. But I also saw this which really confused me:
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| Apparently he doesn't care about his head or his feet, just his chest and arms. |
As a final touch, I donned gardening gloves and my hiking shoes and finally felt ready.
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| Beer in hand, I'm ready! |
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| Look at me, I'm local! |
Don't get me wrong, of course it went through my mind several times that maybe whatever I was about to get myself into would be a bad idea. I was told that people get burned quite often and even met someone who had an eardrum blown out from a firework going off in his helmet. Despite all of these alarming stories, I had to see for myself what this was all about and figured, most people come away from it uninjured with a great story to tell.
The way it all works is that the businesses of Yenshui township prepare all year long for this event by each elaborately decorating their own large structure that houses fireworks. These structures serve no other purpose but to literally house enormous amounts of fireworks. The fireworks don't face up either, they face horizontally, directly at you.
I'm not sure how many of these structures there are but there are a lot of them... maybe about one hundred? Of course, they don't set off these structures all at once. Instead what happens, is that these men holding palanquins housing statues of different folk heroes or gods journey to each of these structures and serve as the signal for the lighting of each structure. So as a spectator, the best thing you can do is keep an eye on these palanquins because they know where to go next. This goes on from about 9pm til dawn.
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| One of the palanquins, not sure what they're holding. |
Luckily, we easily found one structure about to go off as soon as we arrived. It also happened to be a really huge one and for some reason it wasn't at all crowded. Now there are several ways you can view the fireworks. You can go right up front to the structure, inches away from the fireworks, you can back up further and further or you can view from the side where you have a lesser chance of getting belted with the fireworks but get the pleasure of seeing everyone else getting hammered on. I of course got pretty close to the fireworks, nearly front and center, probably about a couple of feet away and braced myself for the unexpected. What happened next was along the lines of not being able to see anything except for flashes of light and tons of smoke. I found myself flopping around like I was engaging in some sort of wild dance because I was being pelted left, right, top, bottom. Not only that but I didn't want any of the fireworks to get stuck to me because they were very hot so I was desperately brushing off fireworks from all over my body. As far as hearing goes, I heard the loudest explosions I've ever heard in my life and lots of yelling and screaming, much of the screaming coming from myself.
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| Chris's leg. One of many holes that were made. |
The rest of the night was filled with lots more firework attacks and the last one that I witnessed was the most explosive. When they wheeled out the structure, everyone was at first unimpressed because it was smaller than the rest of the ones that we had seen.
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| Look at all of those fireworks! |
When I got closer, alarm bells went off in my head because though the structure was smaller, the fireworks were gathered together in larger groups than the ones that we had seen. Sure enough, when it was lit, the large crowd that had gathered in front of it dispersed in a wave and all I could see were people running in different directions and blinding explosions everywhere. A couple of the fireworks hit my pants and stuck so I tried to brush it off with my gloves which only made them burn through my gloves. I was flopping around getting my hands and legs burned and trying to find a place to hide but realizing that there was no place to hide because the fireworks were EVERYWHERE.
After that last one, I was exhausted, my ears were ringing so much I could bearly hear anything else and I felt ashamed for ever being impressed by Fourth of July fireworks back at home. I observed the scene around me and saw piles of empty fireworks that reminded me of snow banks back in Colorado.
Arriving home around 8 am I was delirious, shocked and exhausted. My cool new rain outfit had holes all over it and had to be trashed, not to mention that I had a few burn marks and huge welts on my legs.
So what did I think? WOW. The Taiwanese are crazy. Nice, but crazy. I think the only way I would ever do that again is if someone came to visit me and it happened to be around that time. Otherwise, don't think I'll do it again for the heck of it.
Thanks for reading!
If you come across my blog and have any questions about any of my posts or are interested in some of the places that I've visited or lived in, please feel free to email me.
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