Held every three years, this rite sees a massive wooden boat lit on fire to protect the Pingtung County town of Donggang from disease and pestilence. It’s like Burning Man…expect it’s a boat.
Here’s a schedule of events. I’m heading down with a few friends. Anyone else?
I’ve been planning to go for several months now, and for me it’s a cinch. I live only 10 minutes from DongGang.
Great. Can you confirm that the burning is on Saturday morning at 2am? That’s what I’ve heard.
I spoke with my wife about it not ten minutes ago, in fact. She says that it’s scheduled for Saturday at 2 am, but this is Daoism, so the gods might not play along with that scheduling. I think that they’ll call the gods at 2am, but the gods might show up late or not at all.
Hmm. Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking coffee.
Thanks.
Where is this exactly? And is it Saturday morning 2:00 AM?
My wife and I are planning to go to Nantou and Alishan this week, maybe I/we could go on To Pingdong.
Dong Gang, Ping Dong County. It’s south of Kaohsiung on rt 17. The human side of this event starts Saturday at 2am anyway, at which point they’ll try to get the gods to go along with burning the boat. They might have to wait until late, or even until the next night if the omens aren’t right.
Another interesting little tidbit is that because there will be so many ghosts and so much evil involved, a full three year’s worth, people with certain astrological signs are advised not to attend. This info comes from something my wife read in the local paper.
btw Thanks Mucha Man for the link.
Some pictures from the festival.
Who all went? I said hello to a few fellow Western foreigners there, but nobody seemed particularly friendly. I wound up walking around, drinking beer, and hanging out with a group of Phillipino and Indonesian fisherman from the fishing port. There was plenty of time to kill waiting for the show to start.
The boat got to the shore at about 2 am, and there was a a great amount of time spent making paper money piles, burying firecrackers, stepping the masts and hoisting the sails. By the time I left, it was 6:30am, and the boat was still burning pretty good.
I’ve also uploaded some video clips.
video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc … 5&hl=en-GB
video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc … 1&hl=en-GB
video.google.co.uk/videoplay?doc … 8&hl=en-GB
I’m struggling to reconcile my love for events like this and Yanshui, with my intense dislike of air pollution…
Fantastic pics Salvatore. That looks like it was quite a party.
Thanks for posting those.
Mu[color=black]c[/color]ha Man and I were there, and we bumped into belgian pie at the festival - our SO’s were there too.
Edit: Looks like we were on the opposite side of the boat from SA (judging from the second picture).
Then we drove to Kending and had a marvellous weekend (after napping at a hotel - the boat wasn’t burned unil 5:00am!). Driving back on Sunday night along Hwy 3, we encountered zero traffic jams.
I see you guys made it back savely, we (my wife and I ) arrived this morning at around 2:30 AM, stopped over in Jiayi for a few houres, than had a coffee at the Taichung rest area on the #3, nice view from the deck terras … enjoyed my coffee that kept me awake after this ‘heavy’ weekend … well, it became heavy after I met MM and Chris.
Anyways, here are the pics …
The preparation and dances …
The departure (pulling-out) of the boat …
BP:
gasp your pics are awesome… better than actually being there. (and I was) 
The burning … and I can tell you that it was getting hot so close to the fire, my cams were about to melt … 
More to come in the next few days about the whole day, will try to edit a short movie too …
[quote=“Salvatore Armani”]BP:
gasp your pics are awesome… better than actually being there. (and I was) [/quote]
Thanks, probably the experience and some luck … BTW, I’ve been looking for you … asked several foreigners if they were you but non was … :s
Used flash sometimes for close-up, fill-in light of persons but otherwise no flash … ISO 1600 …
As promised some more from the festival …
Great pix, BP. Hell of a lot better than our grainy, blurry photos.
Thanks, but as I posted before … experience and luck …
BTW, how’s the vid?