Taiwan, for its minuscule size of an island nation, celebrates a wide variety of traditional festivals. These festivals are based on the lunar calendar, an old calendar system that traces its roots back from nearby mainland China. These festivals are a striking and good reflection of Taiwan’s colorful culture.
To help you learn more and know what make these Chinese traditional festivals so unique and fun, here is a short list of some of the more popular festivals:
Chinese New Year
Considered as one of the most enjoyable of the many Taiwanese festivals, the Chinese New Year brings a lot of inspiring Chinese values as its main highlights. But the first thing that attracts the most attention in this festival is the great and noisy Chinese firecrackers. The main reason why such noise was created in this season was because of the belief that firecrackers would scare away evil spirits and ghosts.
An important part of the Chinese New Year is the night of the eve itself, when families would come together and have dinner. For some families, preparing “chiao tzu”, a dumpling shaped like a gold ingot, would welcome luck and wealth for the incoming year.
The festive atmosphere of the Chinese New Year is not only found within Taiwanese homes. Street performances, such as the energetic dragon dance, can be watched and enjoyed throughout the entire city.
Lantern Festival
Considered as a “second new year”, the Lantern Festival is a bright and colorful Taiwanese festival. Lanterns of all shapes and sizes are paraded out in the open, to adorn and spread goodwill around. A stimulating activity that is practiced in this festival is the incorporation of lantern riddles. These brain-teasers, inserted in some lanterns, offer a fun and educational aspect for everyone to participate in.
Ghost Festival
This spooky yet interesting Taiwanese festival is to offer praise and guidance for the dearly departed. Lanterns are also used in this festival, wherein they are believed to guide ghosts from warding off to the realm of the living. A thrilling yet dangerous game played during this time is the “chiang ku” competition. This energetic game involves participants stacking sacrifices on top of each other. The tower like contraption of the sacrifices makes it difficult for the participants to stack a new batch of gifts, forcing them to climb. The final performance of the Ghost Festival is the “chung kui” dance, where a monk’s graceful movements are said to lead remaining ghosts back into the underworld.
These are just some of the unique and joyous traditional festivals one can experience in Taiwan. The country’s love for their culture is so great, that certain steps are implemented to retain the unique and original feelings. Hope you get to experience a traditional Taiwanese festival when you get the chance to visit this wonderful country.