 Pingxi
Lantern Festival.
Carrying wishes and dreams, thousands of sky lanterns
float to the heavens during the Sky Lantern Festival
of Pingxi, New Taipei City.
Gently glowing against the backdrop of the night sky,
the lanterns paint a beautiful picture. If Vincent
Van Gogh saw this, perhaps this scene would be one
of his Starry Night paintings.
Sky lanterns can be found in Thailand, Japan, other
parts of the Americas and Europe, but its origins
are from 3rd century BC, China.
This is called a Kong Ming Lamp, it can be used as
a signal. When troops are in the mountains, they don��t
have mobile phones or any other phones, but they can
float these into the sky and to let each other know
what��s going on, to communicate.
Used like flares in the old days, today people make
wishes with them.
Because I��m at a special time in my life right now,
I��m about to be a daddy, so I think it was nice to
write some messages for child to be.
In addition to the Sky Lantern Festival, Pingxi is
known for its coal mines.
Pingxi is home to black gold. Black gold is coal.
The entire Pingxi train line was built to transport
coal. This is the entrance to the mine
Mining took place here from 1918 to 1997.
This is where coal was shoveled through. You can climb
up the shaft through here to dig for coal. When the
acacia wood (supporting the shafts) creaks, you have
to quickly get out, otherwise you will be killed when
it collapses.
There were women miners?
Yes. But later to protect women and children, they
weren��t allowed to do the more dangerous work. If
both parents worked in a mine and something happened,
the children would become orphans.
When we were little, we didn��t know how hard our parents��
work was. They never talked about it, they just kept
telling us, ��Go to school.��
It��s like a little travel back in time. The place
may be not so well preserved, there is a definitely
sense of history.
It really makes you appreciate how hard people use
to have to work and how hard we don��t have to work
now.
The Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival this year is from
late January to mid February.
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