We went to the Taipei Lantern festival at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall this past Saturday. It is held annually on the 15th day of the first moon and is celebrated as a "second New Year." This year's theme had to do with fertility to boost Taiwan's declining birth rates.
The government is offering a small stipend to the family when they have a baby ($20,000 NT, approximately $700 U.S.) as well as child care allowance to reduce the burden of raising a child in the city where it is very expensive and apartments are not very big. The trend in recent years has been to get a dog instead of having a child so you will find many rat dogs dressed in costumes and being pushed in strollers. Much more common here and in Korea than L.A. even.
Different schools and organizations compete to have the best lanterns.
In Taipei it is common to not have any public trashcans. People usually carry their garbage until they find a trash can or deposit it in a random bike basket while passing by. Here at the lantern festival there were groups of people shouting and grouped around each trash can. (They are all wearing ponchos because it was really really rainy, but they seemed to be having a good time!)
The lantern festival is really cool so we highly recommend it. There is also another festival in Pingxi, but since we did not know about the festival until later (it only ran one week) we missed it but will certainly check it out next year.
