The Lantern Festival (元宵節) is a traditional Chinese festival celebrated on the fifteenth day of the lunar new year and its celebration marks the culmination of the Lunar New Year celebrations.

Historically the Lantern Festival was a festival steeped in tradition featuring simple round red lanterns which would symbolize a new start for the new year and good fortune and elaborate lanterns were made mostly for noblemen or the emperor.

These days lanterns come in all shapes and sizes and can be very complex in design.

Lantern Festival in Taiwan is an important celebration with events being held in every county in the country as well as a designated national Lantern Festival which is being held in Taichung this year.

The Taipei Lantern Festival is being held beside the Yuanshan MRT station (圓山捷運站) at the former Flora Expo Park. The event runs from 2/27~3/8 and admission is free. The festival typically attracts large crowds, but as usual in Taiwan, crowd control is taken care of extremely well and the crowds shouldn't be a deterrent for visiting and taking part in the festival.

The Taipei Lantern Festival features many lanterns created by students who took part in a lantern-creation contest throughout the country and includes many different categories and themes using goats, historical figures and scenic spots found within Taipei.

If you have time in the next few days, be sure to stop over and visit to enjoy the hard work of many of Taiwan's students. The Lanterns this year are pretty awesome and the park is set up extremely well for viewing all the lanterns at your leisure!