Happy Lunar New Year

Happy Chinese New Year!
This Chinese New Year we had the pleasure of celebrating it in Taipei, Taiwan. Here are some photos I took during the celebrations:

Year of the rat! On the first day of the Lunar New Year Aimee and I went to visit an old famous temple in Taipei called Lung-Shan Temple. This rat was sitting outside the entrance.

When we arrived it was obvious we weren't the only ones who decided to visit the temple this day. There were long line ups to get inside.

We got in line and slowly shuffled our way closer through the front doorway. The air was thick with incense smoke. It was actually pretty difficult to breath at times.



This video shows the crowds and smoke in the temple.

Once inside I noticed hundreds of people were moving around and briefly stopping with their incense to pray at various points all over the temple. Because of the huge crowds, I found myself being lead by the masses of bodies to these various points because it was difficult to move away from the main direction people were going. Most people in the crowd were holding the incense well above their heads so they wouldn't burn people in the crowd. This may work for most people but for me I found myself dodging these incense sticks because above their heads is my eye level. Hundreds of sticks in incense threatening to poke out my eyes! Thankfully my eyes are safe and my clothing ended up with no burn marks.

Lighting the incense sticks.

This fire container was used to burn the incense sticks once people were finished with them.

At night we went to a different temple. It was much smaller but it had its own unique character.

At night the lanterns were an amazing site.

Who's this Canadian-Pinoy-Boy celebrating Chinese new year?

Yeah, I know I already included a photo of some lanterns but I figured since everywhere I turned I ended up seeing lanterns you might as well see more than one photo of them. See, it's amazing site!

I never really thought of neon as something you could mix with religion. I always thought of neon lights as things you see in bars and restaurants. But when you mix blue neon lights with larger than life statues decked out in red patterned clothing you end up with something nothing short of a religious experience. The sites, the smells and the buzzing sound of neon oddly brings you closer to God. Or at least the feeling of God.

Fireworks! They were everywhere!

We even had some!
These sparklers were fine, but unfortunately some of our other fireworks were faulty. Our group bought a standard roman candle type of firework. It had three feet on the bottom which allowed it to stand on the ground. The roman candle worked well enough but it was one of the feet that had an issue. You see, once the flames of colour started shooting out the top one of the feet broke and the whole roman candle tipped over. Out shot colourful fireballs into ... crowds of people! Yes people. Like World War III our firework was blasting fireballs into the crowded street. People were screaming. People were shocked. People more angry and yelling at us... Especially this one woman. Boy was she pissed! I'm glad I didn't understand enough Mandarin to know what she was saying because I'm sure it wasn't polite. I'm sure she wasn't invited us out for tea. I'm sure she wasn't congratulating us on our fine show of fireworks. I'm sure she wasn't asking us to be the Godparents of her next batch of children. She was rage incarnate. After a while she calmed down and we all went off in our merry way.

Next time we'll stick with the sparklers.