The goddess Mazu- a year of good luck

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I'm so tired right now. Not surprising I guess, considering I had about 3 hours of sleep on Friday night. The train ride wasn't too bad- I had a really hard time finding the area where they sell tickets and ended up walking up and down stairs, and all around the station for about 25 minutes with that huge backpack on. I was sweaty and my back was hurting and people were laughing at me. Not fun. Finally when I found the ticket office, they couldn't speak any English or understand the piece of paper I gave them with "Yuanlin" written on it. Finally someone in line stepped forward and shouted out the name of my destination in Chinese and I paid for my ticket. I made it to the train just in time for it to take off. The ride was about 3 hours and pretty uneventful. The architecture doesn't change much from town to town and it seems like there isn't one piece of land that's going unused here.

When I got off the train, it was chaos- there were people everywhere. It turns out that this weekend is the pilgramige of Mazu, the goddess of water. 65% of Taiwan believes in Mazu and there are about 500 Mazu temples on the island.

Every year they carry a statue of her from coast to coast, from temple to temple, all the way across Taiwan. People line up to position themselves underneath the statue that they carry (it's on what looks like some kind of medical stretcher, but made of gold). If the statue is carried above your kneeling body then you'll have one year of good luck.

A friend of Janice's is a reporter and wanted to get a photo of a bunch of foreigners kneeling under Mazu for the local paper, so we actually got to do it. I can't even begin to explain how weird the whole scene was. Almost every person there was burning incense, or paper money (it's illegal to burn real money- so they go to their local temple and give them real money and the temple will give them fake paper money to burn). I was told that the reason they do this is so that their ancestors can have an affluent afterlife.

On top of all of that, they light firecrackers everywhere on the street to scare off the evil demons. I had some firecrackers go off right near my feet. It's supposed to be good luck if a firecracker hits you. Paul was telling me that him and Janice actually went to an event where you just stand there as they shoot firecrackers into the crowd. Everyone hopes that they will get hit for good luck. Janice said it was so scary, she'd never do it again.

When Mazu finally came around, we were ushered to kneel down in pairs of twos. Mazu is carried kind of low- so you have to press yourself right against the ground. Hopefully now I'll have good luck for the rest of the year! It seemed lucky that I happened to come to Yuanlin on the day that Mazu was rolling through.

Today we're heading to Ali Shan for some hiking. The cherry blossoms are out now and it's supposed to be really beautiful.

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Photos

The crowd by the train station
This is what I saw when I got off the train...

Baby stroller
Don't think this would fly at home.

Asleep at the Mazu parade
Hey, it's a long trip.

Kids on scooters
I've seen entire families on scooters here.

Everyone leaves
Mazu has left the area.