Taiwan Today

Visitors are bringing the rural township of Pingxi back to life.

Hu Min-shu (胡民樹), 60, is still thrilled at having set the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest sky lantern back on January 1, 2000. The lantern measured 18.9 meters high, with a diameter of 10 meters at the top and 5 meters at the base, and was made for an event organized by the New Taipei City Government and Taiwan Public Television Service as part of the millennium celebrations in the city’s Pingxi District.

The launch of the giant lantern, painted with the messages “Keep Going Taiwan” and “Peace,” into the night sky was broadcast live in more than 60 countries through some 70 media outlets, putting Pingxi as well as Taiwan in the international spotlight.

“I felt honored to gain a Guinness World Record and I’m happy to see that sky lanterns have helped revitalize our town by bringing in more tourists from Taiwan and abroad,” says Hu, who learned how to make lanterns when he was a child and has taught the craft over the years. “Lighting sky lanterns is an old folk custom in Pingxi. They weren’t widely known, though, until the New Taipei City Government and local enthusiasts started promoting them about a decade or so ago.”

Sky lanterns are also known as “Kong Ming Lanterns.” Legend has it that they were the invention of ancient Chinese politician and military leader Zhuge Liang (諸葛亮, 181–234), who was commonly known as Kong Ming (孔明). He used the same principles that lift a hot air balloon to send up lanterns as a means of military communication. Another story has it that the first sky lanterns were shaped like Kong Ming’s hat, hence the name.

Pingxi’s connection with sky lanterns can be dated back to the early 19th century. At the time, the area was prone to attacks by bandits, and villagers would flee into the mountains seeking shelter. When the threat had passed, the men who had stayed behind as lookouts would launch lanterns to signal to the others that it was safe to return to their homes.

Today, sky lanterns have become a symbol of praying to the gods for blessings. The sight of hundreds of paper lanterns carrying written wishes and slowly floating into the vast sky is spectacular to behold.

Yu Ya-fang (余雅芳), chief of the Tourism Marketing Division of New Taipei City Government’s Tourism and Travel Department, says the city government has devoted considerable resources to promoting Pingxi’s sky lanterns since 1999. The result has been that the popular tradition has inspired a large-scale carnival for the town’s Lantern Festival. The traditional festival is held throughout Taiwan each year on the 15th day following Lunar New Year celebrations, usually some time from late January to mid-February depending on the lunar calendar. It is hoped that the Pingxi celebrations can drive the area’s tourism development, Yu says.

The four days of the 2012 Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival, for example, included shows such as a cosplay event, in which fans dressed up as their favorite comic book characters and acted out scenes, and live music and martial arts performances. There were scheduled mass releases of 200 lanterns each night (in addition to those released individually), culminating in the simultaneous release of 1,000 lanterns on the final night, filling the heavens with the colored lights sailing upward.

Yu credits the city government’s organizational work and aggressive marketing campaigns with increasing the number of visitors to the festival from 170,000 in 2008 to 470,000 in 2012. There has also been greater attention from the international media, with Discovery Channel, for instance, calling the Pingxi event the world’s second largest carnival in 2008. In fact, the popularity of Pingxi’s sky lanterns has become so great that even the Taiwan Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo was built in the shape of a sky lantern as a symbol of Taiwanese culture, Yu says.

Up, Up and Away

To give visitor numbers another boost, the city government intends to organize more activities throughout the year. Accordingly, it has started to promote mass lantern releases one weekend every month and on certain holidays such as Valentine’s Day and Halloween. Since 2011, there have also been lantern-making competitions, with entries submitted by everyone from senior craftsmen to young students.

The city government hopes more people will become interested in the lanterns so as to spur the development of artwork, gifts and souvenirs based on the folk custom. “Apart from carrying on the tradition, another purpose of organizing activities related to sky lanterns in Pingxi is to help establish them as the town’s distinctive feature in order to facilitate tourism and overall economic development,” Yu says. “We want to let domestic and international visitors know about this place and entice them to explore its many attractions.”

Located at the upper reaches of the Keelung River and set amid green hills and valleys, Pingxi was once the center of a coal rush after large deposits were discovered in the early 1900s. At the height of the “black gold” era, the town became very prosperous as tens of thousands of miners came and went.

The Taiyang Mining Company, which owned the mining rights to the area at the time, built the 12.9-kilometer-long Pingxi Line in 1921 to transport coal. The branch line connects to the Yilan Line (the trunk line from Taipei to the east coast) at Ruifang Station, and runs from there to Sandiaoling Station, also in Ruifang District, through Pingxi’s Dahua, Shifen, Wanggu, Lingjiao and Pingxi stations, before terminating at Jingtong Station.

The line was renovated to carry passengers and general cargo in 1929 and its operation handed over to the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) after the end of Japanese colonial rule (1895–1945). Today, it is the oldest of only three branch railway lines still in operation in Taiwan.

The Pingxi Line brought nearly a century of industrial growth to the district and dramatically influenced the lives of local residents. The mid-1990s, however, saw a slump in mining that culminated in the last coal mine being shut down in 1997, and the line faced the bleak prospect of being abandoned. By the end of that decade, though, rising interest in train travel in general, as well as the local government’s efforts to promote sky lanterns in particular, directed renewed attention to the branch line and it is now used mainly to serve tourists.

Wang Kuo-jeno (王國振), chief of the Scenic Area Administration Division of New Taipei City Government’s Tourism and Travel Department, praises the beauty of the branch line’s route, which skirts creeks and wooded gorges, crosses bridges and passes through tunnels as it winds its way through the mountainous area. This picturesque backdrop combined with the nostalgia of rail travel has attracted large numbers of Taiwanese and international passengers.

At the same time, the railway remains an important means of transportation for tourists visiting the area. Once there, visitors can discover a number of attractions, including relics of the coal mining era, old-style village streets, mountain trails and many kinds of plant and animal species, Wang says.

“Pingxi possesses rich and unique tourism resources, which make it a destination worth exploring and promoting,” Wang says. “We’ve sought to improve tourist facilities and services along with the general environs as a way to increase accessibility, comfort and convenience for visitors.”

Accordingly, the city government is working with the TRA on a number of improvements, Wang says. These include a scheme to mount a camera on the locomotive and install video screens inside the carriages to allow passengers to see the track and scenery ahead of the train. There are also plans for trains to run more frequently, to provide tourism information on board, and for the renovation of railway stations along the route.

“By enhancing railway services, we hope that tourists will start to enjoy their trip upon boarding the train,” Wang says. “The Pingxi Line, which offers great scenic excursions, is poised to become one of Taiwan’s top tourist attractions.”

Chien Hua-hsiang (簡華祥), executive of the Pingxi District Office, says the district’s population of only 5,000 has the highest proportion of elderly citizens—nearly 29 percent over the age of 65—in Taiwan, as most young people have moved elsewhere in search of education and job opportunities. Nevertheless, there are signs that things are changing. “We’ve seen a drastic rise in the number of visitors to our town [especially] in the last two years, helping revive our community,” Chien says. “In the past, local business owners often worked just two days [Saturday and Sunday] and took five days off each week, but now many of them are at work every day because of the influx of customers.”

The district official credits the sky lantern festival and a number of films, television programs and music videos that have been shot in the area with boosting Pingxi’s profile. His office focuses its efforts on maintaining public facilities such as parking lots, toilets and rest areas.

Pingxi District, which is situated in a small basin surrounded by mountains and valleys and has an average humidity of 80 percent, is the only place in Taiwan where sky lanterns can be released legally, Chien says. But he emphasizes that the town cannot rely solely on sky lanterns to grow the local economy, saying that it should promote other features such as the natural landscape and local culture.

“Sky lanterns have served as the catalyst for local development in leading the growth of businesses like restaurants, guesthouses and souvenir shops,” Chien says. “We’ll continue to work closely with the New Taipei City Government to realize our vision of transforming Pingxi into a cultural district so that the area can sustain the development of tourism.”

Building Business

Wang Rui-yu (王瑞瑜), chairman of the Pingxi Commercial District Association, says local jobs became scarce after the last coal mine closed down, resulting in the closure of many shops. While the sky lantern festival has helped bring in more visitors, he says credit for the town’s economic revival is also due to small-business assistance schemes from the Ministry of Economic Affairs (MOEA).

In 2005, the MOEA’s Department of Commerce began providing training for townspeople in the basics of running a business, setting prices and serving customers. That knowledge has allowed locals to seize business opportunities as they have come along, Wang Rui-yu says, adding that the courses were crucial to setting up his own souvenir shop and the reason the commercial association was formed.

Wang Rui-yu says that after seeing the inflow of tourists not only on weekends but also on weekdays, young adults are returning to Pingxi to open businesses, many in storefronts that had been closed for years. His association, which was established in 2008, has taken over the job of providing training and consulting services to those interested in starting a business.

“Over time, our town has experienced ups and downs in its different stages of development from agriculture, mining and now tourism,” the chairman says. “With ongoing public and private efforts to conserve and promote our cultural, historical and ecological resources, our town is back on a growth track and we hope to see a return to prosperity.”

Capturing the Essence of an Old Town

After graduating from the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei in 1983, like most of his classmates, Chen Wen-hui (陳文輝) took a job as a high school art teacher. Driven by a strong desire to draw, however, Chen gave up the stable career of teaching four years later to focus full time on creating art.

Some 20 years have passed since he decided to dedicate his energy to painting and Chen remains as enthusiastic as ever about his work. Enchanted by the beauty of nature, Chen traveled from one place to another across Taiwan in search of good locations for landscape painting. It was not until 2005 that he decided to settle down and establish a permanent studio. The place he chose was Pingxi.

“Pingxi has a rich array of flora and fauna, in addition to having preserved its old buildings and railway line,” Chen says. “Those natural and historical treasures provide me with an inexhaustible supply of ideas for artworks. I doubt I’ll be able to paint them all during my lifetime.”

Chen says his urge to paint the scenes around the village is motivated by the thought that some of the old properties or businesses, such as traditional grocery stores, are likely to be demolished or closed one day. His goal is to create a record of those images through painting. The decades-old bridges, homes, railway line and shops amid the district’s beautiful natural environment have thus become common themes in his artwork.

The artist says that when he is preparing to paint a particular scene, he likes to visit the spot at different times of the day and in various weather and seasons, and attempts to work the many moods of a place into a painting. That is something other art forms, like photography, cannot do and is part of the freedom he enjoys in painting, he says.

Given the town’s development as a tourism destination, Chen has opened his studio to the public. Along with selling his artworks, he has produced 16 postcards based on his drawings. He hopes that by means of those postcards sent throughout the world, more and more people can get to know the beauty of Pingxi.

“Pingxi is filled with vitality and at the same time a sense of harmony between man and nature, which provides a lot of inspiration for artistic creations,” Chen says. “My life will be worthwhile if some of the works that I create can be deemed part of the local culture.”

—Kelly Her

Write to Kelly Her at kher@mofa.gov.tw