It Takes ****s

Taipei mayor Hau Lung-bin makes a "please vote for me next election, pretty pretty please" appearance at the commencement of this year's Qingshan Wang (青山王) festival, pulling none other than Qingshan himself.

Yeah, that's my photo. Because I'm hardcore like that and I managed to slither and elbow my way through the crowd to the front. It takes serious ****s to pull that kind of stunt in Wanhua. I managed to say "台灣加油!" in Taiwanese ("daiwan ga yu") to his face. Go me.

Anyway, so Qingshan's birthday - celebrated with three days of crazy, traffic-horror inducing parades, began today. Wander around the Wanhua area (Longshan Temple, Huanhe S. Road, Guiyang Street etc.) after about 3pm tomorrow or Monday if you are interested in some good festival photo ops.

A few photos from today:

The yin-yang god, I believe, with sacred bread. This year's sacred bread was better than last year's. I think they screwed up last year's batch.

Me and deer penis. Like I said, it takes ****s. Wanhua is a crazy neighborhood, so if you've got a hankering for some deer-penis-and-winter-bug alcohol, or some turtle-arm-deer-ear soup, this is the place for you.

Today's festivities were really good for dragon dancing photos. I was especially impressed with the light up dragon. Good work. They even got two dragons to dance facing each other with a ball in the middle, like in the temple paintings and sculptures.

I just think this is cool. If you hadn't known before, this is how they get the tall god costumes down the street.

Below: storing the firecrackers until it's time to make everyone deaf.