Flying Lanterns and Hanging Bamboos at Shifen Old Street

The year 2019 had been a good year for James, my husband, and me because we were able to explore three international countries while also going to many domestic spots but the highlight for 2019 was really us getting married which we found out after our Seoul travel.

I figured out I have not shared our international travels in blogs so I am glad that I can share the experience with you here in Hive. Today, let's go to Shifen Old Street, a very famous spot in Taipei for flying paper lanterns.

On our third day in Taipei, our day was already full as the husband's company already set up a tour towards Yehliu, Shifen, and Jiufen. The trip was cold, wet, but filled with so much information about the traditions and even history of the country.

We headed to Shifen Old Street after our quick and very crowded stopover at Yehliu.

Well, I really thought that we could get away with the crowd but really, the same set of tourists who were there at Yehliu were the same ones who'd be coming to Shifen and Jiufen, so basically, we saw just the same crowd.

It took us about 40 minutes to reach Shifen. As expected, there were already buses at the parking lot. It was also expected that the old street is already filled with tourists who wanted to send out their wishes.

While the paper lanterns were used before to deliver messages to soldiers during a war, today, it has been used to send wishes hoping that the gods would be able to read them. If you are a Buddhist, paper lanterns are believed to be associated with Buddha's wisdom enlightening the world.

Flying a paper lantern costs around TWD 100-150 each. These are huge lanterns by the way, before reaching the place, I thought these are small ones but they were, in fact, huge, powered by fire for them to fly up to the sky. However, there have been several groups that criticize the flying of these paper lanterns as they end up in mountains, rivers, ruining nature, although they are paper, they are colored ones and the writings in them still affect the environment.

My husband and I were there only to take photographs, we watched as our friends write their wishes, they take photographs as they fly the paper lanterns, I was also able to take some snaps of the other groups of tourists, mostly from Korea and Australia.

These inks are used to write into the paper lantern. There are different colors, the more colors you buy, the higher the price. These were the colors and their significances:

The husband and I just enjoyed our time taking photographs of everyone, the colleagues, the friends, even the other visitors. We saw how they had enjoyed flying out their lanterns bearing their wishes. Most of them share one lantern, also, buying the four colored lantern was for them the best deal as they can wish according to the color's significance.

While paper lanterns are the famous ones here, there are also other means of leaving their wishes in Shifen and that's through the hanging bamboos.

Hanging bamboos with Chinese characters can be found around the Shifen area. It bears wishes for health, happiness, love, protection, success, and good fortune.

Aside from the lanterns, this old street is also known for its old train which is still working today. But first, we tried taking photographs at the railway.

After a while, we heard the train and it was just amazing how little space was left for people to keep their distance away from the railway. Tourists must be vigilant enough not to be run by the train.

We never have any more time left going to the Shifen Waterfalls which I heard is a nice spot too, it started raining when some were still flying their lanterns so we headed to the souvenir shops and bought ourselves some items. I remember buying sweets and food. I remember these stores were selling them in numbers like if you buy this number of sweets, they'd give you another pack and so on.

There were also souvenir items such as keychains, ref magnets, and the like. I bought some magnets with milk tea and the Shifen lantern designs for our magnet collection.

Next, we will go to Jiufen! Stay tuned!