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Tourism Bureau unveils festival lantern designs

The spinous country rat is unveiled during a press conference for the Taiwan Lantern Festival at the Grand Hotel in Taipei yesterday. PHOTO: LO PEI-DER, TAIPEI TIMES

The Tourism Bureau yesterday unveiled the designs of the main lantern and the hand-held lanterns that will be used during the Taiwan Lantern Festival in Tainan next month.

The main lantern features the spinous country rat (台灣刺鼠), a species of rodent endemic to Taiwan that is mainly found in forests and bushes.

Weighing 25 tonnes, the rat lantern, with a gold ingot in its hand, was mounted on a 3m-tall pedestal. Designers also used state-of-the-art technology, including optics diffuser films and holography, to give the lantern a brighter shine.

The hand-held lanterns are a paper mache design known as Vital Rat (活力鼠). Wearing a sporty outfit and sneakers, the rat has two fire-wheels attached to the side of its legs.

Hung Hsin-fu (洪新富), who designed the papier mache rat, said the lantern uses recyclable synthetic paper and a light-emitting diode bulb that can display seven different colors. The folds are already marked and each lantern can be made in about three minutes, he said.

"The lantern is meant to represent Taiwan's vitality and health," he said.

Event organizers have produced 120,000 hand-held lanterns to be distributed to participants.

The festival will begin on Feb. 21 and end on March 2.

Bureau Director-General Janice Lai (賴瑟珍) said yesterday that the festival, which was introduced in Taipei in 1990, has since become one of the nation's most renowned tourism events.

She said the Discovery Channel would visit Taiwan this year to cover the event. Aside from the festival, the channel also intends to film other local events, including hot-air lanterns in Taipei County's Pingsi Township (平溪), beehive firecrackers in Tainan County's Yenshui Township (鹽水) and the "Han Dan" festivities (炸寒單) in Taitung County.

In the annual event, a person dresses up as Han Dan, a God worshipped locally, and allow others to fire firecrackers at him or her.

Tainan County Commissioner Su Huan-chih (蘇煥智) said the lantern festival would be held at Solar City (陽光電城), a new town established near the Southern Taiwan Science Park.

Solar City is located between Hsinshih (新市) and Shanhua (善化) townships and features a community powered entirely by solar energy.

Visitors to the festival can come via the Sun Yat-sen Freeway or the Formosa Freeway, he said.

Su said the county government had built three connecting roads to facilitate the transportation of tourists and also built a 30-hectare parking lot.

A temporary train service will also be available.
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