It is not often that Taiwanese grandmothers have the chance to outshine teenagers and twenty-somethings, but the “gray mommies,” as Gordon Tsai (蔡聰明) calls them, have definitely become one of the highlights of the Dream Community’s (夢想社區) annual Dream Parade.
The stretch of Taipei from the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial to Katagalan Boulevard (凱達格蘭大道) and the Presidential Office Building is frequently filled with people taking part in political rallies, protests, marches or the annual Double Ten National Day parade/celebration, but for sheer madness and fun it is hard to beat the Dream Parade, whether one is a participant or an observer.
It is a little bit Mardi Gras, a little bit Brazilian carnival and a whole lot of Taiwanese ingenuity.
Photos: CNA
The parades feature elementary and junior-high school samba drumming corps, floats and movable sculptures created by by families, university students and community groups, stilt walkers, samba and belly dancers — whose ages can run from the single digits to octogenarians — and much, much more. The parades are extravaganzas of feathers, sequins, chiffon, beads, glitter, body paint and a whole lot of drumming.
The 14th annual parade will be held on Saturday, and Tsai, the dreamer, prime mover and chairman of the Dream Community in New Taipei City’s Shijr District (汐止) — a lifestyle “village” built on the idea of community-based celebratory art — said this year’s event is an extension of the Matzu project that the community took to the Burning Man festival in Nevada last month.
There is a slightly serious side to the parade. The 20-plus samba drumming teams in the parade come from schools in Aboriginal communities along the east coast and elsewhere around the nation — the result of a years-long project by Tsai, who has sent Brazilian drummers to teach their art as a part of community-building exercises.
Photos: CNA
To get to Taipei each of the teams had to win a local drumming contest, and on Saturday they will be trying to win the National Dream Cup Samba Drum competition, which rewards the top groups with musical instruments and other prizes for their schools. There will be about a dozen judges distributed along the parade route, ranking the youngsters on their drumming, choreography, costumes and energy.
The parade begins at 3pm at the Liberty Plaza between the National Theater and Concert Hall. The 1.2km-long route takes the participants up Zhongshan South Road (中山南路) to Renai Road (仁愛路), where they make a right turn and head toward Linsen South Road (林森南路) and a U-turn that sends them back toward Ketagalan Boulevard and the post-parade party area in front of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The parade is scheduled to end between 6pm and 6:30pm, with an after-party running until 8pm.
Photos: CNA
If you are looking to collect some of the Mardi Gras bead necklaces tossed from the floats, your best chance is to position yourself in front of the Chang Yung-Fa Foundation Evergreen Maritime Museum or at the beginning of Renai Road, where the crowds tend to be a bit thinner than the initial stretch of Zhongshan. Those are also the best places to be to take photographs.
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