Beehive Firecrackers
Beehive Firecrackers are a famous local folk activity in Taiwan during the Lantern Festival. When several rockets are fired from over a parapet to mark the beginning of the event, thousands more are launched forth like hornets from a nest, hence the name “Beehive Firecrackers”. Those of Yanshui Township are the most renowned worldwide.
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Is this the world's most dangerous fireworks festival?
What starts with splutters of sparks soon erupts into a roar of flaming projectiles that hurtle directly into the crowd, or screech overhead. Welcome to the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival, an annual religious tradition held on the 14th and 15th day of Lunar New Year (February 21 and 22 in 2016) in Tainan City, Taiwan.
Taiwan Lantern Festival─ Yanshuei (Yanshui) Beehive Fireworks Festival
The “Yanshuei (Yanshui) Beehive Fireworks” is ranked as the third largest folk celebration in the world and is one of the most representative religious events in all of Taiwan. With hundreds of thousands of firecrackers all going off at the same time, it is a cacophony like hundreds of thousands of bees streaming out of their hives. The event attracts huge numbers of onlookers every year and is paired with the “Pingxi Sky Lanterns” in describing Lantern Festival activities: “Sky lanterns in the north, beehive fireworks in the south.” Tradition has it that the “beehive fireworks” originated in July/August, 1885 as a cholera epidemic raged in the streets of Yanshuei. Owing to the underdeveloped state of medicine at the time, victims of the disease multiplied daily and the local population lived in fear, praying to Guan Di, the god of war, to bring an end to this calamity and save them.
What's Yanshui Beefive Fireworks Festival?
The Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival attracts thousands of visitors by being the 5th most dangerous festival in the world. In the late 19th century a cholera epidemic broke out and the people decided to use fireworks to call attention to the god of war, to give them strength in their fight against the exorcism and demons associated with this disease. This event takes place in Yanshui District during the 15th day after the beginning of the Lunar New Year and multiple launchers of bottle rockets are lit, leading the rockets to be shot out rapidly in all directions.
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Examples
1 Yet the biggest bright spot of the Lantern Festival lies in Yanshui Beehive Fireworks, a folk celebration as famous as Pingxi's Sky Lanterns and Taitung's "Bombarding Lord Handan ".
2 The most well-known Tainan Yanshui Fireworks (Yanshui Beehive Rockets Festival) will mark the grand finale of Tainan 2015 Chinese New Year celebrations.
3 Yanshui Beehive Firecrackers Festival in southern Taiwan is rather unusual because fireworks are actually launched into the crowd!