Elena and I were getting off the metro on a Saturday to meet Chad at AIT for lunch. We heard traditional music, a lot of banging and garbled noise. My interest was piqued. We followed our ears and found a parade approaching. We watched for awhile, understanding that this was a god parade, then went to meet Chad. We sat down at our favorite fried rice stand and within a few minutes the parade was approaching us from a different direction. Chad's nurse told us we were rather fortunate to stumble across this parade as it only happens once a year.
Religion here in Taiwan is a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, ancestor worship and folk religion. My understanding was that this parade was to celebrate the birthday of one of the gods.
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| Carrying an idol |
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| Boys dressed as the different gods. |
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| Traditional drumming.
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| This man led the parade. His job was to sweep away the bad spirits with this long broom. |
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| The boys dressed as gods, stopped at this offering outside a business. They blessed the offering then went into the business and swept away bad sprits and blessed the business. Sometimes we see offerings on the street in front of businesses to bring them good luck and prosperity. |
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| Traditional Chinese dragons. They did a dragon dance for us. |
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