Bringing in the New Year with some Lanterns

So, Chinese New Year was celebrated earlier this year in February, signifying the transition from the year of the Dragon to the current year of the Snake. Every year, the Chinese/Taiwanese people celebrate the New Year for fifteen days, with the official end to the celebration being the Lantern Festival. I got to go see many of these lanterns that were displayed in a part of Taipei known as Yuanshan. It wasn't the biggest display of lanterns in Taiwan though. Apparently some time ago it was decided that different cities in Taiwan should have the honor of hosting the biggest shindig, and this year that city was Hsinchu. But there were still lots of neat lanterns here

Entrance to the Lantern show
 

Some kind of god / heavenly official. The local deities in Taiwan kinda have a kind of bureaucracy going on, and I'm not exactly sure of this guy's role ^^^.

Chinese Dragon

Environmentally friendly lantern

A goat lantern, because I was born in the year of the goat

Everyone's a fan of Spongebob

some fun-looking characters

Martial arts master and happy wife

I remember walking around with my family in the area surrounding the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial when I was a kid, seeing all the cool lights and lanterns and the reddish, orangish glow that gave the whole event a certain aura of fascinating radiance. Lots of dragons and little accordion-looking lanterns that my sisters and I could carry around with us. 

Another practice during the lantern festival that I never knew about when I was little is that which many of you have seen if you ever watched the movie Tangled. People do in fact light up lanterns and watch them float away into the sky, the most popular location for this being Pingxi, a city not too far outside Taipei. To many people, it has a religious significance, as in people will write their wishes/prayers for the new year on the lanterns that they send up to heaven in hopes that the gods will hear their prayers and bless them in the next year. There is even added significance to your lantern depending on which color lantern you choose. Por ejemplo: 

This sign shows what the meaning of different colored lanterns is,  like red being a hope for health
and peace, purple being for good luck on tests, and blue being success in work/jobs.

At any rate, my friends and I didn't attach any of this kind of deeper meaning to our lantern. We simply had fun practicing some Chinese and then lighting up the lantern. 

This be our lantern.

This is a picture I borrowed from a friend. A much better shot of the mass of lanterns rising.

From far away, the lanterns look a lot like stars

Also, I forgot to mention that we were only a small part of the mass of people that were making the trek to Pingxi that day. Instead the usual hour or hour and a half that it might have normally taken to make it there, it took us three. A combination of waiting for trains and riding in them literally packed in like sardines. But altogether it was a fantastic experience.