Consider the Dragon Bombed

So, this is Cody again, it's time for my quarterly blog post. Today I'm going to try to tackle the subject of "how to properly Bomb a Dragon." Don't worry, I'm an expert in this now, I got a full weekend of hands on learning a few weeks ago in what turned out to be one of my top 2 or 3 experiences in Taiwan so far. Here is the back-story: I arrived on island in Jan 2002 to begin my mission. My first area was a city up in the mountains called Miao Li. 3 weeks after I arrived Chinese New Year began. Miao Li is a much more traditional town than Taipei and I remember writing home and saying it felt like I was in a war zone each night for two weeks due to the never ending chorus of fireworks and mortar shells. The town was crazy, fire works everywhere, random dragon dances in the streets every night... it was great. Then, 15 days after Chinese New Year is the Lantern Festival. However, neither me nor my companion knew about this. We just went out to tract one night and we noticed the whole town was engulfed in dragon dances. There were Chinese opera's and acrobats set up in front of the train station, there was a huge parade, a bazillion fireworks, again, it was awesome. At that time I remember making a promise to myself that I would some day come back and experience this night for real.

Well, I fulfilled that promise to myself. I did some research online and finally found out what that festival was. It's called "Bombing the Dragon." Long story short, the Hakka people who populate Miao Li have a big festival on the Lantern Festival. Instead of just lighting lanterns and watching them float serenely off into the night sky, they build huge dragons, then find a bunch of crazy teenage boys to parade the dragons through mounds and mounds of firecrackers until the dragons are all burned up. Pretty cool tradition huh?

I took off early from work on Friday and we hopped on the train down to Miao Li. The actual "bombing" event didn't take place until Saturday night, but from the info I could find online it looked like there was an event on Friday night titled "Stepping on the Street." We decided to head down early and take the chance that this "Stepping" event wouldn't be a bust. We totally lucked out. I forgot Chinese is an extremely descriptive language. So guess what "stepping on the street" is in English. A PARADE! DUH CODY!

We got there a little early so we took some pictures of the teams getting ready:

Cute little old ladies practicing their performance:




This is the best picture we could get. Trying to get 4 giddy old ladies and Jadyn to hold still is impossible.




Cool Chinese Opera guy.



So after a pretty lame lion dance that is not blog-worthy (except a pic of the lion that was actually a tiger--one of the two in Taiwan, because it is now the year of the tiger) the parade finally started.

Unfortunately, this parade was at night and we don't have a big nice camera so the pictures didn't turn out. The parade was a combination of entries from all the little communities and villages around Miao Li mixed in with some roller blade classes, some small businesses and a random wedding photography house or two. Overall, it honestly was one of the coolest things to see. My favorite may have been the Aborigine group that got all dressed up in their traditional garb and marched through the streets. Here are some of the highlights.







I ask you a question: What is more inspiring/amazing/mind-blowing than a jazzy with a big Chinese gong tied to the back and a little old lady doing her best to run to keep up with said jazzy and gong all the while keeping beat? I answer you: nothing, my friend, nothing.






After the parade we decided to just randomly walk around the town and find one of the many random dragon groups who were also randomly walking through town. It was super easy to find, you just had to follow the smoke signals and fireworks. They all had huge firework shows going off in the middle of crowded streets and right on top of hundreds of onlookers. Definitely not safe, but totally rad nonetheless. Here is one we walked into after about 5 minutes. Here is one example:



I tried to take a pictures of the ginormous fireworks bouncing off the apartment buildings.... but of course, it didn't quite turn out like I planned. But here is a crappy picture to give you an an idea anyway:



After having our eardrums blown out for a few minutes, we decided to go meet back up with the actual parade. The parade route was basically a big circle through town. We had strategically placed ourselves at the start of the route so it was only a five or six block walk to the end of the route. We walked down the main road in town just so we could see it lined with thousands of people who showed up to watch the parade. They were also watching the police officers who were stopping traffic so THEY could light off fire works. Little different than Taipei where we saw plenty of groups get shut down by "the man" for lighting off fireworks at the baseball stadium across the street from us. Anyway, we walked to the end of the route so we could see some more dragon dances. This time, however, we pushed our way to the front so we could get a better view. It was a great idea until we realized these guys were going to light off thousands of firecrackers (again, more damage to the eardrums) and to make it worse, we realized we were down wind. After the first round of firecrackers, we were running for it. We were instantly engulfed in smoke. We ran around to the other side of the circle so we could see without having to breathe in all the pollutants. These particular dragon performances basically consist of the dragon team running through more firecrackers than should ever be set off at the same time. We are not talking "Black Cat" or "Ladyfinger" sized firecrackers, we are talking M-80 sized. These things are HUGE and they definitely go bump in the night. There is really only one word I can use to describe this experience: LOUD!!!


I did my best to be a good dad and cover Jadyn's ears while this went on for about half an hour. As such, we didn't get many pictures because my hands were permanently glued to Jadyn's ears in the vain attempt to appease my sense of guilt for being the cause of her now permanent hearing loss. After the guys were done self inflicting 3rd degree burns on themselves, they then let people take pictures. Here are a few close ups of the dragons:






On Saturday we got up and headed to the morning market. It was one of my favorite parts of town on the mission and turned out to be one of the best morning markets of my mission. Sorry, we didn't get any pictures because that kinda stuff is just normal now. After the morning market and breakfast we hopped on the train and headed to San Yi, the wood carving capital of Taiwan. San Yi is basically a teeny little village that exists to sell wood carvings. The entire town is little shops like this:




I'm kinda a weirdo-- I didn't want to spend a bunch of money, but I also LOVE the smell of this little town. Honestly, I wish you all could smell it. It's heaven. In fact, I absolutely love this place, I love the carvings, the smell, the people, the mountain. Anyway, to bring home my little piece of heaven I decided to buy three bags of wood shavings that smell incredible to mask out the smell of sulfur that wafts down the mountain/volcano every morning.


Nicole on the other hand has much more class than me and this is what she bought:



After a few hours in San Yi and a trip through their Wood Carving Museum, it was time to head back to Miao Li for the actual "Bombing." The event said it wasn't going to start until 9:00 p.m. So we took our time, got some dinner and headed over about 8:30. Bad idea, Brother. The bombing was to take place on a flat piece of river bed, presumably with the hopes that more people would be able to see the event. Well, we were not some of those "more people." We spent a lot of the time fighting for position to catch a glimpse of the goings on below us. I ended up pulling out our video camera, pointing it at where I figured the "bombing" was going on, facing the screen down so we could see the action, then proceeded to watch the entire event on my 3x2 digital camera screen. At one point I had quite a crowd of short people around me watching the screen as well. After I ran out of hard disk space I switched to our normal camera to take video. I had Nicole help me post a few of them below. Our little camera had a hard time deciding what to focus on with all the flashing lights, but... after watching these... you'll get the idea. I tried to upload a few different ones so you can get a feel for how it was to be there. My favorite ones are the ones where you can see everyone piling the firecrackers on the head of the dragon then a guy with a blow torch lights all the firecrackers. AT that point a fireball engulfs the dragon head and the guy holding up the head. And then of course, everyone cheers real loud because who doesn't love watching someone light them self on fire?

(Please forgive the shaky camera work, I was getting bumped from all four sides and I really couldn't see exactly what I was filming. I was just holding my hand up as high as it would go and pointing it in the direction of the deafening noises)





Here is another one that shows the head getting blown up and the guy below it disappearing in a fireball.I wish you could hear how loud it really was. Our little camera and these YouTube video's just don't do the noise justice. If you watch really close in this one, right after the firecrackers go off, you can see the dragon team switch out the guy's holding the head and the dude who just got lit on fire is rushed off to what I'm pretty sure is an ambulance waiting to treat burns. Crazy/stupid you say? Sure... if you are that guy, but for the rest of us, I call this quality entertainment.



Well, that was a long enough post, so I'll close up here. I'm pretty sure nobody is reading at this point so I could probably say anything I want to down here. First, I'd like to send some love to my Aggies who begin the WAC mens BB tourney today. Secondly, I'd like to thank the weather for warming up today and for giving me blue skies for my long weekend alone with Jadyn while Nicole is in Hong Kong for the Womens Conference. Lastly, I'd like to thank Kim Jong Ill for giving me something to shake my head about everyday. His latest threats to blow up the world make me laugh. Good luck with that buddy, you better stick to keeping your nation in poverty to support your unnatural obsession with French wine, Italian designer fashion labels and Cuban cigars. Jerk.

See, I told you nobody was reading anymore.