On June 11 (Day 149), we were docked in Keelung (Taipei) Taiwan and I took a tour to Shifen Waterfall.
It was a hot rainy day. It was pleasant to walk through a jungle area along with many other tourists. Our objective was to view two waterfalls.
On the walk, this shrine or just garden (I’m not sure) for horse lovers caught my eye.
There were many local tourists at the waterfall. Most of those tourists, and many more, gathered at the site of the skylanterns, which was a twenty minute walk away. People came to write a wish or prayer on one of four sides of these lanterns, which were for sale everywhere.
I teamed up with three other people from our tour, each of us writing something on a side of the lantern. Then, we went to the center of a train track nearby to launch the lantern into the sky.
A person from the shop who sold the lantern came over and started some kind of fire in the bottom of the lantern. It quickly went up into the sky. I don’t have pictures of this launching. We watched our lantern, and many others go up high into the sky. It was an impressive sight, and an experience that draws many people to this area.
Later, we watched some of the lanterns come down, creating some liter in the woods around. I wondered about the environmental impact of this custom. I found this article about it. And another. Our guide did not mention this, but there is a whole dialogue going on about this practice. Apparently the older methods of doing this were more environmentally friendly, and now lanterns like the ones I helped release are less so. I wish I had read this before I took this trip:
Traditional lanterns are made of bamboo and cotton paper, which can decompose individually after dropping to the ground. The material used to burn the lantern is joss paper (paper money), letting the flame to spread through the whole lantern so it can be fully burnt.
But since the making of traditional lanterns require specific techniques, and are hard to be produced in bulk, lantern makers have replaced the bamboo with magnetic wire. Also, to make lanterns launch-able in rainy days, cotton paper and joss paper are substituted with chemical coating materials. Additionally, the size of lanterns is made much bigger than before, which makes them hard to burn completely.