Saturday, April 7, 2012

Jump: More Photos From The Baosheng Cultural Festival


I'm not really going to comment on this one - the photos say it all. I'm sure you're mostly familiar with the Baosheng Cultural Festival, which takes place every year around this time at Bao'an Temple (one of the best temples to visit in Taipei) to celebrate the birthday of Baosheng Dadi (保生大帝), who is associated with good health and medicine. There's a parade, there are operas, there's firewalking - this year we made it to the parade and will see an opera tonight, but not the firewalking, which I've been to twice previously.

Pictures are in order of the troupes they appeared, and were taken in front of a school on Yanping N. Road (I think Yanping Elementary School), where the road is wide enough to do full performances, unlike in front of many temples in that part of town. I personally enjoyed the last fighting troupe the most - the guys from Kaohsiung in blue and white are SERIOUS fighters, even if this performance is only for show.

I've noticed as I posted these that the photos look kind of darker on Blogger than on my computer. I'm not sure why that is.

Enjoy!











OK, I'll comment on this one. Oh my.


My sister, doing duckface with a tall god






I love the city bus going by in the background in this one.











































Thursday, April 5, 2012

Preview: Baosheng Dadi's Birthday Celebration 2012

I'm all about the temple festivals (as you know if you read this blog with any regularity). Baosheng Dadi's birthday festival is going on, well, right now: yesterday was the parade, which I attended, and today is firewalking. This weekend there are Taiwanese opera performances at the temple both evenings - line up at around 4pm to get a good seat. 

I'm really excited about the photos I took yesterday, but haven't had time to sift through all 550 of them. Here's a sneak preview, with more to come tonight or tomorrow. With a pro camera that can do rapid fire shooting, I've got entire arcs of motion in some groups of photos that are just amazing, and I did a much better job of capturing motion this year than previous years.

Enjoy - with many more to come!