stuff.com.nz
Date: January 7 2018
By: Sharon Stephenson

You can imagine the pitch: let’s make some poor bloke in a motorbike helmet stand still

MARTIN HAUGHEY
Just some of the 11,000 fixed lanterns on display at this year’s Taiwan Lantern Festival, the biggest to date.

while hundreds of firecrackers and rockets are fired at him.

It would never wash with New Zealand’s health & safety junta, but in late 19th century Taiwan, it was thought to be a good way to ward off evil and misfortune.

Our guide Danny tells us that the Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival, an annual religious festival held on the 14th and 15th day of the Lunar New Year, started after deadly cholera and plague epidemics ravaged the townsfolk for two decades.    [FULL  STORY]