Sky lanterns in Shifen: Crime scene on the railway track

Everything you are doing here is forbidden, at least in Germany. Do gymnastics on train tracks, take photos in the track structure, light a fire to let sky lanterns rise into the air. But the people in the small Taiwanese town of Shifen stand close together, not on a street, but on a railway system that drives up just two or three meters away between the houses next door.

This place in the very north of the island of Taiwan is a tourist stronghold, because the old mining town has focused entirely on tourism after the end of coal mining. Everything here is full of small shops and colorful food stalls, but the main attraction for all visitors is the railway line that cuts the place.

A very special kind of dealers have settled to the right and left of the railway embankment. They all sell this trinket and that nonsense, but the main argument for a visit are sky lanterns. These are paper sacks that are more than a meter high and are available in all colors - and if you buy one here, you get paint and a brush to write your deepest wishes on the balloon.

This is a must for the Taiwanese, because even if the former island of Formosa is now one of the leading high-tech locations in the world, all the computer chips and components that are used in cell phones and tablets come from here, and the residents here are all quite superstitious. So why not send a few wishes to fate, it could be that some god finds the balloon somewhere and reads the message.

The hustle and bustle is incredible, because after buying and painting the sky lanterns somehow have to be raised in the air. There is not much space for this, only the single-track railway line is available. No sooner has a train passed than everything storms onto the tracks and everyone tries to get their lantern in the air. Before that, of course, there are real photo orgies, because Taiwanese people are also absolutely photo-enthusiastic people. Then a fire is made and it is hoped that your own sky lantern does not get stuck on one of the pretty wooden houses on the left and right and set the ancient clusters on fire.

Strangely, that never seems to happen, maybe also because everything has to go very quickly, because every half hour there is another train, announced with a loud horn. Suddenly everyone rushes off the tracks in front of the houses. It is a miracle that nobody is run over here all the time.

In any case, in Germany everyone would end up in court. "Dangerous interference with rail traffic" is one crime, the other in Germany would be to let the sky lanterns rise, because that is almost as forbidden in the land of peace and order as running around on so-called railway bodies.

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