Lantern Festival

So as you know if was Chinese New Years. New Years last 15 days, and at the end you celebrate it with the Lantern Festival. The 15th day of the new moon is the first night that you can see a full moon. There are quite a few variations as to why people celebrate. It sums up to.............you guessed it good luck and fortune. They have lantern contests with decorative lanters... below you can see a few examples. Some are small, some are large, but all are amazing. All the creations are made with the rice paper that you see adorning traditional lanterns.

So in addtional to all the lantern float thingies, there was also other things to see. Notice the images on the building surrounding the float type thingies... they did this with lights...

We also wrote down our wishes for the New Year and hung them from lights.

The next night we took a trip up to "shen me, shen me, shen me" (pronounced shu mu)....that's Chinese for something something something... Couldn't pronounce the name of the place we went, therefor can't remember the name of the place we went. Anyway, we of course had to take a picture of the moon since it is the Lunar New Year. It was amazing and huge, especially since we were up in the mountains.

This is the town we were in. I took a picture standing in the middle of it.

A train runs directly down the center of it. Here is a picture of some people setting their lantern off. They are really large and you're suppose to write your wishes and hopes and basically just good thoughts on them. Some say they carry your prayers to the Gods. So along those lines, the higher they go the better your luck will be for the new year.

And here we are setting our own lantern off. It went very high and very far. Our lantern wasn't quite as decorative as everyone else's but it suited our purpose. The kids said they want to do that every year. It was quite the experience.

Like I said we had to travel to the mountains to do this.... how you ask... by my favorite mode of transport.... bus!! We didn't want to wait in line for over an hour to get a seat on the bus, so we oppted for standing for the bus ride. We figured stand for an hour to get a seat, or just stand for an hour on the bus and try to stay upright. It wasn't too bad, and on the way back, the kids got to sit on the stairs... which is a good thing, because they were very tired.

Notice Ashton's leaning against the panel... he looks awake, because he's still holding on, huh?

He was dead to the world. He feel asleep like this about five minutes into the ride.

And here is a video of them setting off a bunch of lanterns at once... and yes for those of you who are asking..."don't they come down", yes, yes, they do. Some don't make it up very far because they catch on fire (that has to mean bad luck... seriously, wouldn't that be like an omen), anyway after the fire burns down, they do come down and the mountainside is littered with lanterns. But this town is used to it and they do it year round, not just on New Years.