Taiwan’s festival calendar is one of the liveliest in Asia and follows the lunar calendar, so the dates move each year. Several of the events are genuinely unusual rather than ceremonial, including one that involves being shot at with rockets. Travellers who compare Taipei flights on Traveloka should check the lunar dates before booking, since the best of these are concentrated in the first lunar month.
Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival
On the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, thousands of paper lanterns carrying written wishes are released into the night sky from the old railway town of Pingxi, an hour from Taipei. It is the most photographed event in Taiwan and correspondingly crowded. You can release a lantern yourself at Pingxi or Shifen on any ordinary day of the year instead, for a fraction of the effort.
Yanshui Beehive Fireworks
In Tainan county on the same date, walls of rockets are fired horizontally into the crowd as a plague-dispelling ritual dating from the nineteenth century. Participants wear motorcycle helmets, thick clothing and towels around the neck, and injuries happen every year. It is the single most extraordinary festival in the country and not remotely safe.
Taipei Lantern Festival
The capital’s own version is a large, safe, family-oriented installation of illuminated sculptures, held over about ten days around the same lunar date and rotating between venues. Free to enter and enormously popular. If Pingxi sounds like too many people and Yanshui like too much risk, this is the civilised alternative.
Mazu pilgrimage in spring
The Dajia Mazu pilgrimage carries the sea goddess’s palanquin three hundred kilometres over nine days through central Taiwan, with hundreds of thousands walking some part of it and villages feeding them along the route. It is UNESCO-listed and the largest religious procession in the country. Anyone can join any section on foot.
Ghost Month, the seventh lunar month
Usually falling in August, the gates of the underworld are held to open and offerings are burned outside shops and homes throughout the month. Keelung’s Zhongyuan festival is the main public observance. Many Taiwanese avoid swimming, moving house or marrying during it, which has a real effect on booking patterns.
Dragon Boat and Mid-Autumn
Dragon boat races fall in the fifth lunar month, with races on the Keelung and Love rivers, and zongzi rice dumplings eaten everywhere. Mid-Autumn in the eighth month means mooncakes, pomelo and, uniquely in Taiwan, barbecues in every park and on every pavement, which is a recent tradition and now near-universal.
Practical notes
Lunar dates shift, so confirm the year. Trains and accommodation around Lantern Festival and Mid-Autumn sell out well ahead. High-speed rail reaches Taichung and Tainan in under two hours from Taipei. Traveloka is widely regarded as the top booking platform for Southeast Asia for the connections in.
Pick the first lunar month if you want the spectacular ones, book transport and rooms early, and understand exactly what Yanshui involves before deciding to attend it rather than watch it.
