I saw one in Tainan around Christmas a couple of years ago. The problem is, when these things occur, they blindside me. If I was bringing people from overseas around, they’d actually like to see something crazy like this.
No billboards advertising this stuff. The whole festival, I swear, I was the only foreigner, save a few people dragged there by their Taiwanese wives.
I can’t plan anything here cause they don’t SAY anything, instead insisting us to eat the same bloody food at every night market. Shihlin is fun, but it’s almost the same as every other night market and it encompasses everything all the other ones have.
when they do, it is because they are related, ie. a Taiwanese agency in the target country, meaning totally clueless too. Example: see above Tweets from the Tourism Bureau in US.
So it ends in failure, reinforcing the idea that “we can do it better”… and we go back to square one".
There are only so many weird restaurants I can take people to.
But when we’re not eating. What do we do? If they build ‘fun’, it’s usually for Children. I’m looking at you, Taipei Children’s Amusement Park! Expand it and put some adult rollercoasters and adult themed entertainment like Canada’s Wonderland.
Nature is definitely fun too. But, there needs to be variety. Some cheap touristy crap, AND genuine culture.
Every single ‘COME VISIT TAIWAN’ travel vlog says the EXACT SAME THING!
The Danshui festival? The apartment buildings put up notices warning about traffic obstructions. I spent a while on Sunday morning dodging the parades and firecrackers while grocery shopping. “Oh darn, it’s heading down that road, better go to a different place for milk.” “Uh oh, it’s coming, I need to get out of here - I’ll grab take-out.” And you’d better close the windows to minimize the smoke and noise from cat-terrifying explosions.
But you’re right - those festivals are great for tourists. When I know one is coming, I’ll recommend it to international students at my university; the Taiwanese students are bewildered that anyone would be interested. OK, I get that they wouldn’t be interested - but it doesn’t even occur to many of them that someone from overseas would want to go to this kind of event. Meanwhile the students from Europe especially typically love it.
It almost overlaps with that “embarrassed of Taiwan” thread; there’s so little attention paid to promoting the rich local culture to tourists - there are pictures like in the poster that started this thread, but then nothing about how to actually see that sort of stuff. There’s the Baoan Temple website, for example: great architectural info there, with a detailed schedule of the annual temple festival - for 2012. I wanted to find out when would be a good day to visit this year. No such luck.
The temple events, parades and such are very random unless you know and are familiar with the specific auspicious days. Events and parades for the big holidays like Chinese New Year, Dragon Boat Festival, Mid Autumn Festival etc are near impossible for foreigners to find a schedule for. Often times there is no posted schedule, definitely not in English and if there is, it is not advertised well or promoted to the foreign community. You have to “know someone local” to see this kind of stuff or just be lucky enough to bump into one.
Other countries / regions, such as Bali and Ladakh, have government tourism offices which publish schedules of such festivals.
The way I used to do it was to ask at the temples in advance, using the birthday of their main deity (I have a little book with these) as a guide for figuring out when a miaohui might take place. Bao An Gong (in Taipei Yuanshan) has a big one every three years which boasts some sort of UNESCO recognition…and an English website, of sorts: http://www.baoan.org.tw/ENGLISH/ (Last updated 2012)
I can’t speak for millennials, but I’m confident it’s a word that is often used by older chaps. Or, at least, everyone would understand its meaning and wouldn’t be surprised to hear it.
It might be that they’re embarrassed about looking strange. Countries like India or Thailand go all-out to sell their exotic nature to tourists. The Taiwanese have a tendency to be almost ashamed about this.
Perhaps this is what limits their tourism campaigns. They want to look different to westerners, but also the same.
