Lantern Festival

The last event of the Chinese New Year is the Lantern Festival. Yesterday, February 6th, we went to the Lantern Festival in Taipei. There are different lantern festivals all over Taiwan, each with it's own flavor.

In Taipei, the festival is held at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial, which is conveniently one of the stop on the Taipei subway system. The specialty of the Taipei Lantern Festival must be it's use of lighting. I don't think I have see so many display LEDs in one area. There were light sculptures of all kinds.

And this year, being the year of the dragon, the displays were dominated by a big dragon in the middle of the memorial, from which there was a laser light show.(Dinosaurs count as dragons)

For me, the best was an elementary school's children's display of light sculptures using recycles materials. Like plastic bottles:

And the American and Taiwanese flags made from bottle caps:

There were lots of vendors selling individual light toys, so many that the Taiwanese EPA requested that everyone recycle there LEDs after the toys were used.

This modern lighting took up most of the park, but there were some traditional Chinese Lanterns, beautifully hand painted.

And both modern and traditional Chinese music.

That screen behind the musicians was the largest LED screen I've seen, it made the individual musicians visible to the audience in front. The cameras were mounted at all angles to the orchestra and the screen shifted from one viewpoint to another.