Where is Matt right now?
DECEMBER 23, 2011 - Today I'm learning to dive at Fun and Sun Dive and Travel on Malapascua, Philippines (http://bit.ly/vAoQjP). In three days, we be swimming with thresher sharks. Merry Christmas to me :)
On Febrary 27, 2010 a Chinese New Year fireworks celebration in the Guangdong province went awry and killed 19 villagers.
On February 28th, 2010 I was in Yenshuei Township in southern Taiwan facing a several hives containing tens of thousands of fireworks set to fire into the hundreds of people that were crowded around it–on purpose.
If one thing can be said for Chinese people, it’s that they love fireworks.
I climbed atop a concrete wall about 25 meters away to get a better view. I knew that I would be more exposed than if I were in the crowd on the street, but this was a much better place from which to photograph and record the eruption of fire. The only barrier between me and the the enormous hives of firworks, which combined were about the size of a semi-trailer cut in half, was a telephone pole. I heard a crackling and fireworks began to shoot up into the air. Then there were several ear-popping booms, like cannons going off, and with each boom a pair of large yellow fireworks rocketed into the night sky like anti-aircraft shells. Then, the noise faded away. There was a short silence, and the crowd began bouncing. Everyone was hopping from one foot to the other. There was a loud screech and fireworks began firing in all directions–including into the crowd. I pushed my body against the telephone pole my iPhone in one hand recording the spectacle on video, my Nikon D80 in the other snapping pictures as fast as possible. I could feel the fireworks glancing off of my hands and arms. This is the video that I shot.
The Yenshuei Fireworks Festival, also known as the Beehive Fireworks Festival, is an annual celebration commemorating the end of a 17th century cholera plague. During the celebration, which takes place on the 15th day of the first month of the lunar year in the Yenshuei township, sedans carrying Guan Yu, the Chinese god of war, are paraded through the streets from temple to temple where enormous hives, which contain up to 60,000 fireworks each, are set off, shooting fireworks rapidly in all directions. Festival goers clad in heavy clothing and full-face motorcycle helmets crowd around the hives to stand in the barrage of firworks. When the hives are ignited everyone jumps up and down to prevent fireworks from becoming lodged in their clothes and burning through them. Despite the precautions, people are hurt every year. The worst injuries occur when a firework enters a reveler’s helmet from below and explodes inside. Many people wrap a towel around their neck to cover the gap between the helmet and their neck, but many still do not.
Probably the most common problem, though, is the one from which several of my friends suffered. They began vomiting after inhaling too much of the acrid smoke given off by the firecrackers.
The Yensuei Fireworks Festival is Taiwan’s answer to the running of the bulls. It’s very popular in Taiwan and getting more popular every year. To bring in more tourist dollars officials have been making the festival bigger and bigger. The strategy has paid off. An estimated 350,000 people attended last year, a huge increase over an estimated 50,000 just a few years ago, and a huge tourism boost for a township with a population of just 28,000.
A friend once told me a story about how the festival was conceived. I can’t guarantee its veracity, but it’s an interesting story nevertheless. Sometime in the 17th century Yenshuei was stricken by a cholera epidemic that lasted 20 years. That part of the story is widely accepted to be true. Desperate and frustrated, the mayor of the town enlisted the help of a spirit medium. The medium told the mayor that ghosts inhabiting the city were responsible for the epidemic (ghosts causing disease and misfortune is common in Chinese folklore). The medium suggested that the city invoke the help of Guan Yu, the war god, and set off massive numbers of fireworks to scare the troublesome spirits out of town (using firecrackers to scare ghosts is also common practice). The plan worked, and now the Yenshuei township celebrates every year by shooting millions of fireworks and deliberately at spectators. I’m don’t quite understand the logical connection between scaring ghosts and shooting fireworks into crowds of people, but there are many facets of Chinese culture that confuse me even more. Take for example pickled chicken feet.
This year was my third visit to the festival, and I noticed some differences from years previous. First, I noticed many men in the streets who would wait until several revelers in protective gear were standing nearby. Then the men would hold one end of a string of fireworks several meters long, light the other end, and then run down the street towards the crowd dragging the exploding string behind them. When they neared the crowd they would start swinging the increasingly short exploding string around over their head.
I saw one man finish this display by bolting into a nearby doorway with the last of the firecrackers, scaring the bejeezuz out of everyone in the house. He came out bellowing laughter, his face bright red.
The second new display I noticed was mainly performed by teenagers. They would wrap themselves up in strings of fireworks and then set them off. Below is a video of a young guy I met lighting himself up. Please be patient watching the video. He had to abort his first two attempts and move out of the street when firetrucks with their sirens on came roaring by. The third time, though, was a charm.
Here is a picture of two friends wrapped in fireworks, just before they light themselves up, and as the fireworks exploded.
Although the Yenshuei Fireworks Festival is still relatively unknown, it’s destined to become a famous cultural attraction. It is, as far as I know, the only festival of its kind in the world. It is completely unique. It’s loud, destructive, wasteful, and dangerous. It’s Taiwan’s running of the bulls and it deserves the same international attention, and I hope to make sure that it receives it. I hope to popularize it in my first novel about expatriates in Taiwan the same way Hemingway brought attention to the running of the bulls in his first novel, The Sun Also Rises.
If you like this article, be sure to check out my Yenshuei Fireworks Festival 2010 Photo Gallery.
Mr. Vonnegut speaks at Case Western Reserve University. Picture courtesy of the Wikimedia Foundation.
“I think it can be tremendously refreshing if a creator of literature has something on his mind other than the history of literature so far. Literature should not disappear up its own asshole, so to speak.”
~Kurt Vonnegut in the Paris Review
Read the whole interview here.
Photograph courtesy of fishtail@taipei on Flickr
When I woke up around nine that Sunday morning my cell phone showed that I had 33 missed calls. It rang again in my hand. It was the head teacher from the school I worked at. “We’re at the hospital.” She told me. “Jana was hit by a bus.” On the way to the hospital I zipped and dodged through the heavy Sunday traffic on my motorcycle. The scents of sewage, fried food, and exhaust alternately wafted into my helmet. Westerners find driving in Taiwan, like in most Asian countries, to be lawless and chaotic. Cars pull slowly out in front of you without looking. Taxicabs whip by just inches from your shoulder. People drive without helmets, run red lights, and do u-turns on crowded thoroughfares as a matter of course. Driving in Taiwan, however, is not lawless; the laws are just different. There are two unspoken rules of the road: first, you’re responsible for not hitting the vehicles in front of you no matter what they do. Second, you can drive in front of anyone as long as you can force him to stop and let you by; driving in Taiwan is basically a game of chicken. The larger your vehicle is, the greater your advantage in the game.
Had Jana, driving her scooter, played chicken with a bus?
* * *
Taiwan is a sub-tropical island that straddles the tropic of Cancer. When Spanish explorers first visited Taiwan they named it Isla Formosa, the Beautiful Island. That doesn’t begin to describe it. The mountains are steep and foreboding and crisscrossed with smooth narrow gorges carved out by rivers. The mostly uninhabited East coast is a visual splendor where the mountains plunge into the Pacific Ocean, the last land until Mexico. The beaches in the West are fine white or beige sand and often flanked by coral. Most of the country, however, is covered with dense jungle.
Western lore, from Heart of Darkness to Lost, has portrayed the jungle as a mystical force, and the cultures around them as haunted and bloodthirsty. It’s worth noting that several Taiwanese aboriginal tribes were fearsome tattoo covered headhunters. I’ve even heard rumors of tombs of skulls still hidden in the jungle, their location known only to a few elderly aboriginals.
Most Taiwanese people now, though, are of Chinese descent and adhere to a unique polytheistic mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and local superstition. Colorful temples can be found on most city blocks and are dedicated to one of the many Confucian gods. Almost everybody in Taiwan believes in ghosts. Taiwanese people regularly burn ghost money and set out offerings marked by incense to provide for the ghosts of their dead ancestors in the afterlife. A religious medium called Ji Tom in Chinese (or, more commonly, Tang Ki in the Taiwanese dialect) will enter a trance during a religious procession, become possessed by a god, and flagellate himself with long knives and maces until he’s dripping with blood. There are also higher-level mediums that don’t flagellate themselves. They channel gods and ghosts so that the living may speak with them. Most of the older generation believes strongly in this system and well-known mediums are paid exorbitant sums for their services.
* * *
I’ve never been religious. The opposite in fact; I have a degree in sociology. One event in Taiwan, however, made me question my skepticism. My girlfriend, Christine, had broken her toe very badly in a scooter accident. Her foot was swollen to nearly twice its normal size. We were walking (she on crutches) past a liquor store when the owner called us in. He told me in Chinese that he had seen a ghost following Christine. He wanted to help her. He didn’t want any money. He was a traditional doctor and was concerned about the ghost.
He took us to the back of his shop. There the walls there were lined with clear jars of dried herbs and roots. The doctor motioned for Christine to sit down on a stool. He waved his arms in the air making various Tai Chi-like motions for several minutes and then, suddenly, grabbed the back of Christine’s head with one hand, and pushed his other palm forcefully into her forehead letting out a sharp yell. He repeated this action several times.
Afterwards we thanked him. He told me that Christine needed to come back two more times before the end of ghost month (the month of the year when the fabric dividing our world and the ghosts’ is the most permeable) to complete the treatment. He also told me that the swelling in her foot would go down. We drove home joking about the doctor’s antics. However, within two hours Christine’s foot returned to it’s normal size. The swelling subsided so quickly that her skin was left loose and wrinkled like an oversized sock.
* * *
Jana died.
Jana had only worked at my school for about six months, yet my employer, a Taiwanese man named Daniel, and his niece Sarah who supervised the teachers, took responsibility for her. Daniel had Jana’s parents sign a form authorizing him to make legal decisions in Taiwan regarding the body. He oversaw her body’s removal from the hospital and subsequent storage. When he found out that Jana’s parents couldn’t afford to ship her body back to Eastern Canada for the funeral, rather than have it cremated, Daniel paid the very substantial cost of a refrigerated medical flight halfway around the world so that Jana’s parents could see their daughter one last time.
Taiwanese people believe very strongly in the sanctity of family.
Two weeks later Sarah confided in me. She’d been having strange dreams in which Jana had appeared. She thought that Jana’s ghost was lost in limbo, confused and unable find her way to the next world. I had known Jana much better than she. Sarah wanted to know, did I think this was possible?
Jana was often indecisive, I told her. Frightened and alone Jana could very possibly have gotten lost.
Sarah visited a medium. The medium helped Sarah to speak to Jana’s ghost. She told Jana’s ghost to follow her and vowed to visit Jana’s home in Nova Scotia to return her to her final resting place.
That was four years ago. Sarah hasn’t visited Canada yet because she hasn’t yet been able to afford the trip, but she hasn’t forgotten her promise. Sarah is going to be married this year. She and her husband will honeymoon in Ireland. But before they arrive in Ireland they’re going to fly 2,500 miles out of their way so that Sarah can shepherd Jana home.
This story is not a strange one. Every expatriate who has lived in Taiwan tells stories about the extreme kindness of the Taiwanese people. Although the Beautiful Island may be inhabited by ghosts, I’ve never been to a country where the national character was nearer to that of an angel.
DECEMBER 23, 2011 - Today I'm learning to dive at Fun and Sun Dive and Travel on Malapascua, Philippines (http://bit.ly/vAoQjP). In three days, we be swimming with thresher sharks. Merry Christmas to me :)
 |
 |
 |
 |
