Sanxia

On saturday Selina took me to Sanxia district on the back of her scooter which was an experience in itself, im not the best pillion passenger as i prefer to be in control but im getting better at just letting her do the driving and the scooter is one of the best ways to get around  many places in Taiwan, when we got to Sanxia the traffic was already building up as everyone was heading for the Old street and the main temple for the CNY celebrations, the road was closed off to traffic part of the way down so we parked up the bike and headed for the old street, there were thousands of people already there and there was no way to get to the temple as the police were doing there best to marshall the ever growing crowd, so we decided to walk up the old street first then nipped down an alleyway towards the river bank where there was another pathway heading toward the temple. A precession had already  started down this walkway as part of the celebrations but there were that many people it was slow progress getting to the temple, we decided basically to walk with the precession as far as we could go but we ended getting caught in this massive crush of people all trying to go different ways it was crazy. All the time this loud wailing music was being played and fireworks were going off all over the place.  We were being pushed by the crush past these large looking boxes which had these enormously fat pigs inside, which apparently had been fattened up for 3 or 4 years for this ceremony, the pigs looked like they had been blown up with compressed air they were that fat, on top of the boxes the locals were setting off the fireworks and the music was just getting louder and louder.  Despite the massive throng of people in such a small space everybody seemed to be in good spirits i couldnt help thinking though that this ceremony would never be allowed in England there would be uproar with the treatment of the pigs, no health and safety regard for letting off the fireworks and there were far too many people in that small courtyard if anybody had fallen over they would have been crushed by the stampede. After unsuccessfully trying to make for a small pathway through to the temple we gave up and made our way back to the old street, glad to be out of the crush we walked up the old street and then around back toward the river bank and over the bridge taking in all the side shows and the stalls that were set up everywhere.