Sky Lantern

 On Friday I took a half day off work to go to 平溪 (PingXi) with my mom and little sister to experience sky lanterns!  

Our lantern behind us!

The shop offered both modern markers and traditional calligraphy brushes for writing/drawing on the lanterns.

Since I can't do calligraphy, I drew pictures instead. The pictures on the right are by my little sister.

Sky lanterns are meant to take your wishes up to the skies so you're meant to write your name and the blessings you wish to receive.  The colors of the lanterns also have different meanings (the staff will explain to you) or you can get multicolored lanterns to get all the meanings at once!

In addition to the old street where we did our sky lantern, there is also nearby 十分 (ShiFen) where it was much more popular and the sky lantern shops are more competitive, offering Polaroids and lower prices, so I'd advise going there if you do intend to visit and try!

We found a cute cat-themed shop and inside was a very loud cat who was shut in the back room and definitely wanted to come out and play XD 

Outside the shop was another cat who was more chill.  There were actually quite a few cats we saw around the area!

After we wandered around and my sister bought some gifts and souvenirs, we went to a restaurant and my mom ordered a lot of food to thank her friends who drove us!  We ended up with quite some leftovers :3  So I had the leftovers for dinner that night, haha!  Saves me from cooking.

To be honest, in retrospect I'm wondering if sky lanterns don't cause some pollution... though they are recycled (people go around to collect the fallen lanterns and reuse the frames), there must be some lanterns that are not found.  The skin is made of paper and the bottom ring of bamboo, so they decompose relatively quickly, but there is a wire frame in the base to hold the paper that is lit for the heat.  If it is not found and recycled, I believe it could cause harm to local wildlife.  This is still a very popular tourist attraction to do.

Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you're having a great weekend!