Mickey Mouse at Central Taiwan's 2008 Lantern Festival

Text by Lin Rui-li
Translated by Sho Huang

Organized and hosted by the Taichung City Government, the 2008 Central Taiwan Lantern Festival will feature lanterns in the shape of Mickey Mouse and his polka-dotted love interest, Minnie.

The rodent couple will be all over WenXin Forest Park (corner of WenXin and XiangShang roads), celebrating Lantern Festival from February 14 to 24. The city government sincerely welcomes friends from around Taiwan and overseas to visit in this special event.

The Central Taiwan Lantern Festival has been held for many years and is becoming a well-known festival island-wide. Besides the two-meter-tall Mickey and Minnie lanterns in the main area, this year's festival will have 15 distinct sections. Four sections will host balloon lantern shows while the other 11 sections have themes like creative lanterns, artistic lanterns, street performers, family rest areas, food vendors, fountain shows, and lantern tunnels.

Other parts of Taichung will be celebrating Lantern Festival as well. The Taichung Train Station, DaQin Bus Station, TaiYuan Bus Station, City Square, City Hall, and LeChun Temple will all have lantern shows. Taichung Park is also working together with Taichung Traditional Arts Festival to showcase traditional lanterns. Hopefully, the warm light from all of these lanterns will make Taichung really shine.
Each year during this festival, the city government always thoughtfully produces miniature animal-of-the-year lanterns. This year is no different. There will be 300,000 lanterns handed out at the festival, double the number from last year. The lantern's design is still top secret and won't be revealed to the public until the end of January.

Since Mayor Jason Hu took office, he's been working on making Taichung more culturally, economically sound, and more of an international city. This year's Lantern Festival, combined with the most famous Disney character, will hopefully win more international attention for Taichung and help promote domestic and international tourism.

The director of the Information Office, Chen Yon-fong, explained that, even two years ago, Mayor Hu knew he wanted Mickey Mouse to act as the Lantern Festival's main character for the Year of the Rat celebration. Mayor Hu had the Information Office to get in touch with Walt Disney to get permission to use the heavily copyrighted character. Thanks to Hu's initiative, Taichung was able to secure the rights far ahead of other cities in Taiwan.

The design for this year's Central Taiwan Lantern Festival is different from previous years. First of all, the show will be led by a couple, Mickey and Minnie, instead of just one character--this is unprecedented. Their good friends, Daisy, Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto will also join them, brining even more joy to the festival. nother difference in this year's festival will be the stage presentation of the two mice. Instead of going around in a circle at the stage, Mickey and Minnie will be positioned at each side of the stage and then slowly brought to the center. This will symbolize peace and harmony during the festival.

The combination of Western characters and Eastern culture will surely make for a sensational Lantern Festival. The government hopes everyone will come on out to welcome in the Year of the Rat, the first of the 12 animals of the calendar.