Pingxi district, about an hour away from Taipei, the capital city of Republic of China or Taiwan, is in the mountains, lush, green, and the day we visit, grey with rain clouds. It is home to Taiwan’s largest waterfall, and in the early 20th century, the scene of a coal rush.

Flying sky lanterns makes Pingxi a hot spot on the Taiwan tourism trail. Tourists come here to write their wishes on the lanterns and send them up into the sky.

The railway business in this part of Taiwan rose and fell with the fall of the coal industry. Another touristy thing to do in Pingxi is to buy a day pass for the 13 km railway line and visit the stops along the way – the Jingtong Mining area, Shifen village, and the waterfall, among others.

We buy the lanterns at stores that line either side of the track at Shifen station.

The lanterns are lit in the middle of the track and floated into the sky. I exit the store only to see the train lumber past nonchalantly, so silent I don’t hear it. I don’t see a railway gate opening or closing in visible distance. The train makes the rounds every hour; people know when it’s arriving and simply move out of its way, I’m told.

We dip our pens into the ink pot set in each lantern stand and write our wishes. The paper-on-bamboo-frame lanterns are large and there is yet a lot of space to cover, so our wish list grows. The woman who sold us the lanterns helps us release them after we carry it over to the track.

Francis Hu, our guide, tells us that this practice of writing wishes on the paper is a tradition created for tourism. It is an instance of how the tourism industry married the ancient with the new.

Hu explains that the lanterns were originally a signal. Bandits disturbed the lives of the farmers in this region, who dealt with it by retreating to the mountains once the autumn harvest ended. During the Lantern Festival, a person would be sent down to check if the coast was clear.

If it was, he would light a lantern and send it up so that his kinsfolk in the mountains could see it and return to their homes.

The lantern festival marks the final day of the 15-day-long Chinese New Year celebrations. On that day, lanterns are written upon, lit and hung in front of homes.

“The Tourism Bureau combined these two stories here so the lantern festival is a huge feature in this village,” says Hu. This is the only area in Taiwan where the government allows this festival to be held, tightly regulated as it is a fire hazard.

The writer visited Taiwan at the invitation of Taiwan Tourism Bureau in association with Scoot Airlines.

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