Ghost Festival in Keelung

August 26, 2010 2

For the last 156 years on the 14th day of the Ghost Month Keelung hosts the “Mid-summer Ghost Festival” . Every year a different family/clan is in charge of the organization, this year it was the turn of Wu clan family.

The festival starts with a parade that starts around 20:00 at the center of Keelung. If you know about Spanish traditions, it is similar to the kind of parade organized on January 5th to welcome the Three Kings. Each family clan (a total of 15) and various of the local companies prepare some kind of vehicle that will tour around the city following the parade circuit (that includes a VIP area for local authorities to enjoy the event). There is a mix of religion, party and food. The parade attracts a decent number of spectators of all ages and conditions (including few tourists like us). You can get an idea by checking the pictures here below.


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23-Aug-2010 19:56, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 55.0mm, 0.02 sec, ISO 800View at Picasa





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23-Aug-2010 20:16, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 2.5, 35.0mm, 0.04 sec, ISO 1600View at Picasa





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The parade lasts for couple of hours so we had enough time to divert and visit the “Chupu Altar”. This altar, located at the top of a small hill not far from the city center, is where some of the important celebrations take place during the Ghost Month. When we visited the altar it was almost empty as everybody was enjoying the parade. During the Ghost Month the altar is decorated in very special ways






23-Aug-2010 21:42, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 5.6, 22.0mm, 0.1 sec, ISO 500View at Picasa





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Around eleven buses are arranged to take people to a nearby bay. In our case we were late to take the bus but we were lucky as we found a couple of retired Taiwanese people that faced the same problem. We shared a taxi ride to the bay and they decided to adopt us for the rest of the night. At the bay the clans fill with paper money a kind of house/boat made of paper. After a short ceremory the lit the house/boat that are released to the sea. In other areas of the bay people burn even more paper money and fireworks are arranged to close the ceremony.


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24-Aug-2010 00:51, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 3.5, 35.0mm, 0.02 sec, ISO 800View at Picasa





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24-Aug-2010 00:34, NIKON CORPORATION NIKON D5000, 3.5, 35.0mm, 0.02 sec, ISO 800View at Picasa





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Everything was delayed and by the time the fireworks finished there was no more transport back to Taipei. Luckily for us the Taiwanese couple offered a ride on their car to go back to Taipei and, funny enough, they live not far away from our house. We exchanged our contact details with them and hope to enjoy a coup of tea with them in the near future.

Browsing around I could find this news video about the Keelung event on 2010:
Also a summary of the parade:

And finally a mini-magazine (4 minutes) that describe the Ghost Month and the festival at Keelung: