An audio-visual spectacular held fifteen days after each Lunar New Year, the Yenshui Fireworks Festival (鹽水蜂炮) is one of the most exciting cultural events in the world. The festival, which reenacts a nineteenth-century plague expulsion ritual, draws tens of thousands of people to the small Tainan County town of Yenshui.
\nMany people consider the activity -- in which fireworks are fired above, around and into the vast audience -- to be pointlessly reckless. Enthusiasts, however, regard being hit by these projectiles as auspicious, and describe the pandemonium as exhilarating.
\nParticipation is free; all costs are met by local businesses and temples.
\nBetween dusk Tuesday Feb. 26 and dawn Wednesday, effigies of Kuankung, the god of war, will be paraded in palanquins around Yenshui, carried over burning piles of spirit money, and, at various points along the route, set down before "rocket hives."
\nThe festival is ostensibly in honor of Kuankung, but it is these "hives" -- pyrotechnic launch platforms the size of shipping containers -- which are the center of attention. Each structure bristles with heavy-caliber launch tubes and racks chock-full of bottle rockets -- up to 20,000 projectiles in each.
\nOnce the palanquins are in place, technicians tear off the red paper covers and trigger the contents.
\nWhat happens next is akin to standing near an ammunition dump on which the enemy has just scored a direct hit.
\nEach engagement begins with a dazzling vertical fusillade. Then, over the course of a minute or so, the angle of fire sinks. Fireworks shoot like tracer bullets over the heads of those nearby before bombarding both the palanquins and the audience. For the final few seconds screeching rockets skid up off the road surface, bruising shins and knuckles.
\nCoinciding with but unrelated to the Lantern Festival, the Fireworks Festival has its origins in a cholera epidemic which wreaked havoc on Yenshui more than a hundred years ago. To drive out the evil spirits they blamed for the outbreak, townsfolk carried a statue of Kuankung through the streets while letting off masses of firecrackers. The epidemic soon receded. Ever since there has been an annual reenactment of the plague expulsion parade.
\nSome local businesses barricade themselves shut for the duration. But for others the event is a bonanza. "I like the Fireworks Festival because lots of people come here. Its very exciting. And if the event falls on a Saturday or Sunday, its very good for business," said Su Hsiu-juan (
TAIPEI TIMES FILE PHOTO
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