Making Wishes at Shifen Old Street

It was raining again.

We made our way to Shifen Old Street (十分老街) for some street snacks and sky lanterns. With the rail tracks built in between the rows of shops, we had to jump out of the way when we heard the train coming. It was quite a sight to see people leaping from the tracks to safety together!

There were a couple of vendors selling sky lanterns, so we randomly chose one stall. The 6 of us painted our wishes on each side of the lantern per couple, and scribbled all our signatures on the remaining side. They had a piece of laminated paper with suggested wishes, all written in Mandarin. It’s not a ‘must’ to write in Mandarin though.

WJ and I drew 2 piggies and wrote “幸福美满” and “天天开心”, which pretty much means the same thing now that I think about it – to always be happy.

The shop owner lit a fire inside our lantern and all 6 of us released it together. It went up quickly and we watched it disappear into the darkening sky.

Too bad we weren’t there during the Pingxi Lantern Festival, where people gather to send up thousands of sky lanterns. That would have been an awesome sight!