The donor of the giant rice-bag turtle to Penghu's Shanshui Shangdi Temple dot the eyes of the turtle to symbolically breath life into the offering during a ceremony Monday. CNA photo Feb. 19, 2024
Taipei, Feb. 19 (CNA) Shanshui Shangdi Temple in Penghu County's Magong City held a ceremony on Monday to dot the eyes of a giant turtle made of rice, one of many events around the county that featured turtle motif prizes to celebrate the upcoming Lantern Festival.
The giant turtle, which is made up of bags of rice weighing a total of 5,280 kilograms, underwent the "eye opening" ceremony because the tradition is believed to breathe life into art and ceremonial offerings.
Bringing to life the symbolic turtle also initiated Lantern Festival festivities in the community, which falls on Feb. 24 this year according to the lunar calendar.
Penghu County, home to more than 200 temples, has a long-standing tradition where residents observe the Lantern Festival by praying at temples to ask for pastries in the shape of turtles, an animal long associated with longevity in Chinese culture.
Temples around the outlying islands traditionally organize such foods for believers, with the bags of rice that made up the giant turtle in Shanshui Shangdi Temple to be given to underprivileged households in the county after the Lantern Festival.
Many temples in Penghu also prepared numerous milestone-establishing symbolic turtles this year, such as the super-sized rice-bag turtle in Huxi Township's Longmen Guanyin Temple which weighed in at 25,800 kilograms, which gradually grew 20 times bigger to its current size compared to 13 years ago.
Shanshui Shangdi Temple has also prepared a gold turtle weighing about 500 troy ounces for worshippers to try and win through a luck draw, while Suogang Beiji Temple is providing the same kind of prize but at a weight of about 313 troy ounces.
Meanwhile, the Ta Chih Kan Lung Te Temple also arranged a number of vehicles to be won as prizes, including scooters and a speed boat worth NT$2.5 million (US$79,560).
The Lantern Festival is celebrated around Taiwan, with a local saying indicating that it is observed with flying sky lanterns in the north, shooting fire crackers at people in the east and south, and the receiving of turtle-shaped prizes in the west.
The festival is considered by residents in the outlying islands to be even more popular than the Lunar New Year, with some observing the festival for three days while others do so for 10 days, starting from the second week of the Lunar New Year.
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