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Published: August 11th 2006
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$$$ for the afterlife
Ghost month in Taipei Okay-so I arrived home on the 8th but I wanted to relax a little before completing my final entry.
On our last full day in Taipei, we took a bus an hour away to the small city of Keelung on the northern coast. We were lucky to be able to go to the annual Ghost Festival that is held only one day a year, although the whole month of August is designated "Ghost Month" throughout Taiwan, and China. In Keelung, I went to a cultural center where there were exhibits about what the purpose of the Ghost Festival is, not that I had a totally clear picture. But I just looked it up online. At some point, there was a big clan war in Keelung where both sides suffered greatly (as always) and they were reminded of the importance of celebrating and remembering their ancestors. Of the 15 big clans in Keelung, every year one of them foots the bill to put on the most impressive Ghost Month celebration in Taiwan, which revolves around different rituals to placate the souls of their dead ancestors.
At the cultural center, they were setting up for the big parade and had constructed
Taipei 101
hard to fit in camera lense several things that looked like big dollhouses. Wendy's aunt said that after the parade, the houses would be lit on fire as they floated away into the sea. Cool! But then she said that we wouldn't be staying for that ceremony since they say that it is especially dangerous for children (Wendy's 5-year-old cousin or maybe us, too 😊 to be around for that since they are more receptive to ghosts, and that is the time when the spirits are being released from their "houses" and the earth out into the sea. It is a traditional Chinese belief that ghosts live in the sea.
After that, we found padded bleacher seats on the street and waited for the parade to start. They really knew what they were doing padding the seats. Free fans were also distributed to us. Our bleacher was directly across the street from the main stage with all of the VIPs, so every time a new performance would start we would get to see their backs. A few of the groups actually did a short number facing us. At one point in the parade, I joked that this festival just takes any group who is willing
fastest elevator
Unfortunately they wouldn't put it at full speed for us. regardless of theme. That was after the Disney float with the techno music went by, which was the first of many cartoon/techno floats interspersed throughout the parade. It was like a nice dance break before getting back to the jump-roping or rollerblading schoolchildren, dance groups, wives of Clan X hitting tamborines, and floats covered with red paper lanterns, flowers or ghost houses. There were also 4 or 5 of those long slithering Chinese dragons, but I think my favorite parts (aside from Disney techno floats) were the bands of old men playing scary ghost music on woodwind instruments.
Back in Taipei the next day, I saw tables set out in front of every kind of business with food offerings to the dead: whole cooked chickens, rice, fruit, etc. In front of several of the tables, there was a fire going right by the street where people would burn the fake paper money they bought in order for their ancestors to be rich in the afterlife. Earlier in the week, I also saw furnaces at the temples for the same purpose but supposedly this is the busiest time of year for that.
Our last day, we also managed to
go to the top of the tallest building in the world (at least for the next few months) via the fastest elevator in the world. In case you weren't aware (ha ha) the skyscraper is called Taipei 101. We paid the 10 bucks to ride the elevator up the 89 stories in 36 seconds! The elevator has a special system with steel balls that move up and down to decrease the friction on the cables, and it totally works because I wasn't even aware that the elevator had begun to move until I noticed that the light inside showed that we were already passing the 50th floor. At the top, it was kind of like Seattle's Space Needle in that there were windows all the way around with views of Taipei.
On the way to the airport, Wendy's aunt remarked that it was raining as if the typhoon would strike soon...Off and on with lots of wind. Luckily our plane made it out safely and the typhoon struck the next day, but from checking the news it didn't sound like it was very big.
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