King Boat Festival (王船節) - First Weekend

So the first weekend of Donggang's triennial King Boat Festival was last weekend (the boat burning, by the way, is this Friday so if you are in the area, you should stop by. The processional with the boat starts Friday afternoon and the burning is at night. Late. Like 1am).

I'll edit and add captions later - for now, it's late so sit back and enjoy some photographs. More to come - I took over 700 pictures in 2 days! Stop by later if you want notes on what these things actually are.

Taiwan gets more media attention

...this time for a story in the New York Times on jitong, or "shamans" who become possessed by gods and spirits and can divine things, deal with illness or consult people on their troubles.

If you've read the past few entries in this blog, you'll remember that my friend and I saw a jitong a few weeks ago at the Qingshan Wang festival:


...but the sight was far scarier than the happy drinking monk who possesses Ms. Chang.

The article says that the practice still survives in China as well, but I'd never heard of it being done there, not in modern times anyway. It seems like the sort of thing that would have been quickly eradicated by the Cultural Revolution.