Bomb the dragon

The Taoist ceremony of setting off firecrackers in Tainan or the Yanshui "feng pao" is often associated with the Lantern Festival. The annual Taoist ritual is so well-known that many Taiwanese feel it's their duty to attend the events at least once in their lives. Compared with Yanshui, Miaoli's Beng Long Ceremony -- which also takes place around the time of the Lantern Festival -- is relatively unknown outside its area of origin.

This year, the Miaoli City Government wants to change all that. "Southern Taiwan has feng pao; northern Taiwan has beng long," said Miaoli Mayor Chiu Bing-kun (邱炳坤), while leading a tour of beng long paraphernalia at the Miaoli Hakka Artifacts Association.

For the past five years, the city government has taken over the organization of the folk festival and expanded it in a bid to rival the feng pao spectacle. Since 2000, the ceremony has attracted around 100,000 tourists to Miaoli, according to the city government.

"Beng long means as much for Miaoli's Hakka community as feng pao and other lantern festival events do for residents in other parts of Taiwan," Chiu said. By extending the festival into the one-month Miaoli International Cultural Festival (苗栗國際觀光文化節) this year, the city government expects the number of tourists to exceed 100,000.

Beng long, which means "bombing the dragon" in the Hakka language, is an occasion for communal fun around the time of the Lantern Festival, which falls on the the 15th day of the first month on the lunar calendar. Throwing firecrackers at dragons is believed to bring good fortune for the new year. The more the dragons -- and their dancers -- are pelted with firecrackers, the more propitious the blessings from the gods.

As a traditional folk event, its history is relatively short. While the month of the Lunar New Year has always been filled with sporadic dragon-dancing and setting off firecrackers in Taiwan, the bombing of dancing dragons did not become a serious ritual until the 1950s, when the Shinkong Weaving Factory -- today's Shinkong Group (新光集團), one of Taiwan's top three businesses -- offered dragon dancing teams a red envelope of NT$500 to perform inside its factory building for the company to throw firecrackers at. Only one team finished the dangerous endeavor to receive the award money. Afterwards, big businesses in Miaoli also started hiring dragon dancing teams to enter their premises for bombing.

"Bombing the dragon has indeed brought good fortune, as we can see in Shinkong's case," Mayor Chiu said.

With the hope that the ceremony brings prosperity not just to individual businesses but to all the Hakkas in Miaoli, the city government will stage the bombing at five outdoor locations throughout Miaoli on the evening of Feb 7. The collective beng long will culminate in an on-going, month-long festival, which includes a Hakka artifacts exhibition, ceramic workshops, culinary events and performances by local folk art groups and foreign expatriates.

About one month before the festival, the 40 or so dragon dancing teams start practicing and receiving commissions. Business owners these days spend over NT$100,000 to hire several dragon teams for bombing.

Using bamboo sticks indigenous to Miaoli, artisans follow a series of Taoist rules to make the holy dragon. First to be decided is the number of joints in the dragon's body. Nine, 11 and 15 are considered the luckiest numbers (a spectacular 99-joint dragon was constructed by the armed forces stationed in Miaoli some 40 years ago). The five colors -- gold, silver, blue, green and red -- on the fabric covering the bamboo frame of the dragon represent the five elements of the universe.