The Lantern Festival, 元宵節, is always on the 15th day of the new year and marks the end of the Spring Festival. This year, New Year's Day was 1 February, so the Lantern Festival was 15 February. Pretty straightforward so far.
But in Taiwan, one city hosts the Lantern Festival every year. On the actual day of the holiday, everyone all over the country can light lanterns, watch lion dances, and set off fireworks. If you want to see the big lantern display, you have to go to whichever city is hosting. To make life easier for everyone, they usually keep it going for about a month.
Last year's was in Taipei. I did not go to that one. This year, it was in Kaohsiung for the first time in ten years. That meant it was always going to be crowded. Some people will travel anywhere in the country to see it, but most are more likely to go when it is in their city. Since Kaohsiung is one of the largest cities in the country, and easy to get to from anywhere on the west coast, and it had been ten years since the last one, they decided to hold the festival in two different locations.
Site 1 was the harbor, which has plenty of room to hold thousands of elaborate displays, but very little parking.
Site 2 was conveniently in the park right outside my office. You would think that might make going to work every day a bit of a chore, what with extra traffic and everyone trying to park in my space. Oddly enough, they did not let anyone who was visiting the Lantern Festival into the parking garage, even though there are hundreds of spaces for visitors.
The parking lot where I work was built less than ten years ago. Unlike a lot of parking in Kaohsiung, they knew a little about traffic when they built this one. No matter which entrance you use, you have to turn one way for employees and another for visitors. Without an employee card, you cannot get into the employee parking. Even if they allowed parking during the Lantern Festival, I would have never been affected. I assume they closed visitor parking since there were far more visitors than spaces every night. I have no idea where everyone parked, but there are more than a few options along the MRT line.
This year's Lantern Festival was in the Fongshan District of Kaohsiung (鳳山區). Fenghuang (鳳凰) is a bird from Chinese mythology that symbolizes the sun, moon, sky, and planets. It embodies the union of yin and yang. Though this is the Year of the Tiger, the central display of this year's Lantern Festsival was the Fenghuang.
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