I can’t get enough of the Tainanese temple celebration madness. I previously mentioned “Taiwanese culture : Temple Parade in Tainan-Taiwan” and “Temple action in Taiwan – Longshan Taipei and Confucius Tainan“, but what I saw today was, hands down, the most spectacular of the temple celebrations I’ve seen. Yep, still have absolutely no clue what it’s all about, but it started about two nights ago. I think my apartment buildings are close to a very active temple, that especially likes to do things at night. With an endless series of firecrackers and drum sounds I’ve spend most of that night staring at Taiwanese undecipherable TV dramas and doing nothing on the net, just waiting for that to finish so I can get some sleep.
The morning after, something big was happening in Tainan’s widest street just next to where I live – Hai-An road. I went there to get some breakfast-lunch and was overwhelmed with the most colorful and noisiest celebrations yet. The road was dirty with firecracker and betel-nut leftovers, the air was full of smoke, and my ears were exploding from a combination of that awful-wonderful traditional Chinese ritual music and firecracker/fireworks sounds. You can’t really capture something like that on camera, but here’s a bit of what was going on: