yet another typhoon - pt 1 parade

Another typhoon today means time to write.

The week of my birthday concluded with a ghost festival parade. Keelung has one of two in Taiwan, and I hear that it is the best. The parades here are one of my favorite things about Taiwan. I took pictures and crappy movies on my digital camera, but I don't think that they truly capture the combination of color, movement, crazy sounds, sacred, and profane themes that go on in a parade, especially a big one like this. Maybe I can upload some of the photos soon. All kinds of trucks go by, some with buddhas, some with smiling beauty queens, some with cheerleaders, civic leaders, etc. Some are decorated like temples, some like wierd outdoor seens, some not at all. The music can be classical chinese, soulless techno, western classical, or pop music, usually pumped exremely loudly out of speakers with extreme distortion. Sometimes the music is live, especially the drum music that I like here. The drums are usually pulled by a truck, on several little train sections snaking behind. Sometimes there are dancers (my favorite was the kids drum and dance team dressed in traditional taiwanese clothes). Frequently there are identically dressed representatives of some political group, who do nothing but look vaguely surly. The giant God costumes have strangely swinging arms and remarkable faces. There were a couple of groups of dragon dancers. There were fireworks, and random firecrackers exploding throughout. At the back of the parade, some kids on racing motorcycles and ATV's just rode around. At a midway point on the parade route, there was a stage set up where a local rock band played. It was very interesting to listen to them play in competition with a marching band, two traditional Taiwanese drum groups, and someone speaking on a loudspeaker. Total aural chaos. August in Keelung is super hot, so a mayoral candidate had people circulating and handing out fans with his smiling, Alfred E. Newman face on them (I kept mine). It was all very interesting. I ran into my boss and he explained to me that this is the one festival where all 3 major religious traditions (Buddhism, Daoism, and the local ancester worship) have a big holiday. He also told me that last year there were african dancers and Thai acrobats. At a certain point, I was very tired and kind of numb from sensory overload so I went home, but I probably missed interesting things.