Tony’s mom’s house is next to two Buddhist temples. One had a celebration at night and the other in the morning. We didn’t know about it until we heard all the drums, gongs and loud fireworks outside. We believe they are Mazu Buddhist temples but unfortunately we don’t know much about the religion – here’s the Wikipedia article about the Mazu goddess.
Loud fireworks are required for any celebration it seems. This one was massive. The fireworks (Tony noted that they sounded like Black Cats fireworks) started from way down the street and you could see the cloud rolling towards you.
The Mazu goddess is in the carriage and the tall figures are warrior gods that protect the goddess, we think…
Then there are dancers…
Here’s a video of the parade:
Then, later, we peeked in to the temple to find these guys doing a ritual of some sort. Tony’s dad asked them what was going on and even HE didn’t understand the explanation he was given.
Later that afternoon, as we were driving in a village about 2 hours outside of Tainan. We came across a 3 mile long convoy of trucks carrying things for temple celebrations. Yes, 3 miles! After seeing the parade above, I can’t even imagine what THIS parade would be like…
