On Sunday, party-goers and powder-throwers will gather at Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park to celebrate Holi, a popular Hindu festival. Held yearly during the full moon of the vernal equinox on the Hindu calendar, Holi has come to symbolize the beginning of spring, a time when people repent their past misdeeds and forgive and forget, while dancing in dust-filled clouds of colored powder.
“The colorful festival helps to bridges social gaps and renew relationships,” says Mayur Srivastava, owner of Mayur Indian Kitchen and the event’s director.
The Indians’ Association of Taipei has celebrated the festival as a private event for years. And while the association still holds celebrations for its members, Srivastava, who has lived in Taipei for seven years, was keen on opening up the festival to the public. He’s been organizing the event at Huashan 1914 Creative Park for the past three years.
Photo courtesy of Mayur Srivastava
A TASTE OF INDIA IN TAIPEI
Srivastava says Holi is as much about creating cultural awareness as it is simply letting loose and making new friends. The event will also feature Bollywood dance performances and Indian snacks.
“Many people think of Holi as a fun event, similar to the Color Run. But to the Indian diaspora, it brings us a feeling of home, and to our children, knowledge of our culture,” Srivastava says.
Srivastava has watched the Holi celebration in Taipei grow in popularity over the years and is glad to see festival-goers, young and old alike, have a good time as they dance, laugh and play silly pranks on each other.
He is, however, a little concerned that the spiritual aspect is becoming too commercial. (A portion of proceeds from Sunday’s celebration will be donated to children’s charities.)
“There has been a disappearance of knowledge or awareness regarding the spiritual essence and social relevance of such festivals,” he says.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS
For those concerned about the environmental and health effects of colored powder, Srivastava says that, like previous years, they will use non-toxic, herbal plant-based dyes.
He adds that the Holi festival at Huashan should not be confused with the Color Runs that have become fashionable over the past few years, but which have also come in for criticism because of the amount of pollution generated.
About 30kg to 40kg of colored powder will be used for this year’s event.
“Taiwan is our adopted home,” Srivastaya says, “and we have actively chosen to select dyes and paints that are environmentally friendly, as well as non-toxic, to teach our children that having fun should never be damaging to yourself, your environment or your community.”
INDIAN MYTHOLOGY
The festival finds its origins in Hindu mythology. When the fireproof shawl on Holika, the malevolent sister of the demon king Hiranyakashipu, flew off her shoulders and encased Prahlada, the demon’s God-loving son, Holika was instantly set ablaze by the pyre while Prahlada survived. It was then that the God Vishnu appeared and vanquished Hiranyakashipu in one of the most triumphant showdowns between good and evil.
Over the past few centuries, Holika’s burning has been celebrated in various ways throughout India. One day, on the day after the Holika bonfire, children started throwing colored powder at each other. Apparently, someone thought this to be a marvelous idea, and the Holi festival was born.
PREPARING FOR THE POWDER
General precautions include covering your eyes with sunglasses and applying cream on your face to ensure that the powder will be easily removed when you wash up with water. Contact lens wearers should also immediately discard their lenses and apply new ones if they feel any irritation, while mobile phones should be wrapped in plastic.
Srivastaya recommends participants wear inexpensive white clothing that you can wash or recycle after the festivities.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would