Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival

Yanshui's festival began, by local account, in the nineteenth century as an attempt to drive out a cholera epidemic by parading the god Guan Gong through the town behind fireworks. It survives in a form that has escalated: wooden racks holding tens of thousands of bottle rockets are wheeled through the streets and fired horizontally into the packed crowd, who stand in it deliberately, on the belief that being hit brings luck for the year.

What you actually see

• The rocket racks - wooden frames of tens of thousands of bottle rockets fired into the crowd.
• The palanquins - god statues carried through the streets ahead of each rack.
• The crowd - participants standing in the fire on purpose, for the year's luck.
• The scale - racks fired through the night across the whole town.

When to go

Lantern Festival night only, on the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, so late February or early March. Nothing of it happens on any other night. Shuttle buses run from Tainan and Xinying.

Honest expectations

This is genuinely dangerous and people are injured every year: a full-face motorcycle helmet, thick cotton clothing with no synthetics, gloves and a towel round the neck are the minimum, and they are sold on site. Rockets travel horizontally and burn. Anyone not willing to take that risk should watch from a distance or not go.

Nearby

Madou is south, and Tainan city is southwest.