HOW TO: Taiwan Lantern Festival

When I went to mainland China, my intention was to go there for Chinese New Year and my flight touched down on the first day of the week celebration! When I was doing some reading, I found out that Taiwan celebrates the new year by releasing dozens of lanterns into the night sky.

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Shifen Lantern Releasing, Pingxi District

The lantern festival is held  every year on the 1st, 15th and 21st day of Chinese New Year and held in a place called Shifen in the Pingxi district. Once you get out there, you just join the crowd to watch the event occur! To get out there you have 2 options:

  1. Catch the metro and the long distance train
  2. Catch the metro and then the shuttle bus from “The Zoo” Train station

On our way out to Shifen, we caught the metro and the long distance train and from memory, this took about 2 hours. You have to get to Taipei central station and change from the metro line to the long distance train line to Shifen. The entire trip is signposted very well and we had no issues (and we were very sick!).

When you get out to Shifen, you are immediately greeted with a range of traidional looking chinese stalls selling larger lanterns to release yourself! The only problem is, you release them on the train tracks-the only train tracks when the train arrives and leaves from. For more information on how to get your own lantern and release it click here!

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Train Tracks in Shifen

From here, you head down a little street that takes you past a school and an art gallery to the lantern releasing square. And my favourite thing about this festival is that it is:

TOTALLY FREE!

I would HIGHLY recommend camping out and waiting for at least 1-2 hours before the scheduled releasing to make sure you get a good enough spot to snap some pictures! Each evening, they will do 3-6 releasing’s depending on the time period.

After you have hung around Shifen for a bit and are ready to go back to town you can do either option to head back. We took the bus back to the zoo station and then caught the metro from there. The bus was about a 30-40 minute trip and then from the Zoo metro it took us about 20 minutes longer (but you can work this out based on your hotel!).

Happy Travels!

 

Published by kathroundabout

27 thoughts on “HOW TO: Taiwan Lantern Festival”

  1. Pingback: HOW TO: Shifen Lantern Releasing – Kathroundabout

  3. This looks absolutely magical! I’d love to see this in person one day! Thanks for sharing your experience.

  4. this is definitely on my bucket list! and I love that it’s free. I live in LA and they’ve been doing lantern festivals the past few years but charge like $80 to go. it’s ridiculous!

  5. This looks so pretty. I would love to see all these lanterns glow in the night.

  6. Oh my goodness this sounds like such a great festival to get to go and see, I bet it is wonderful seeing all the lanterns take off in the air.

  8. Every time I see these in a video or movie. I’m always amazed by the and how beautiful they look. What a great experience to see the real deal

  9. How pretty! There is something similar in California as well but I’d love to visit Taiwan to experience this.
    Xo, Sondra
    Cuisineandtravel.com

  11. Sounds like you had a great time! Thank you for sharing the tips on the lanterns!

  12. I love these lantern festivals. This one in Taiwan looks really spectacular. I’m sorry to hear you were ill on the ride to the festival. Great tips for seeing the festival on the cheap.

  13. I got to go to Taiwan to see this lantern festival. I bet this was such a fun and spiritual experience!

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