Residents in the Greater Taipei area and visitors from abroad will have the rare opportunity to appreciate two gigantic dragons dancing in the capital city as part of the celebrations.

The traditional Lantern Festival takes place on Jan. 15 on the lunar calendar each year to conclude the traditional Chinese Lunar New year holidays. The festival falls on Monday, Feb. 6 this year.

The Taipei City Government will ignite the theme lantern featuring a huge mechanical dragon 21 meters high, the equivalent of seven stories, at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Park on Section 4 of Zhongxiao East Road at 7:00 p.m. this evening in test lighting operation.

Dubbed as “Happy Dragon,” the dragon of golden color presented in energy-saving LED lighting is in the posture of taking off to the sky against the background of simultaneous water and fire dances plus 3D animated images with sound and lighting shows for an 11-day period Feb. 2-12.

The “Happy Dragon” will be the tallest among all dragon lanterns to be displayed for the festival around Taiwan this year.

There will also be numerous lanterns designed and made by students throughout Taiwan on display in an island-wide lantern design contest.

Specially featured cartoon lanterns and those depicting magic forests will be on exhibition as well.

A separate virtual dragon with a height of 12 meters for a dragon dancing show at the Taipei City Hall plaza will be largest of its kind in the world.

Dragon Dancing Shows

Aided by the latest technology, the dragon will perform shining dances with image projections produced by innovative lighting nanotechnology and hologram. The dragon will be lit up at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow evening.

Starting from Feb. 2, there will be regular dragon dancing shows of both giant lanterns at an interval of 30 minutes from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. every night until Feb. 12.

In addition, there will be various lantern exhibitions held by different government agencies and local-level governments.

Residents and visitors to the Pingxi District of New Taipei City have already released more than 1,000 sky lanterns on Jan. 26 and 28.

Organizers are scheduled to distribute more sky lanterns for release on two more sessions of Feb. 4 and 6 as part of rituals of praying for peace and prosperity.

The Biggest Exhibition

The biggest lantern exhibition this year will take place at Lukang Township of Changhua County in central Taiwan Feb. 6-19.

Sponsored by the Tourism Bureau under the Ministry of Transportation and Communications, as well as the Changhua County Government, test lighting of the two major dragon lanterns at the 2012 Taiwan Lantern Festival show was held yesterday evening.

The first dragon lantern, weighing for 40 metric tons, is 20-meters tall and installed with 200,000 LED light bulbs.

The second large dragon lantern is formed of nine separate paper dragon lanterns.

In addition to countless smaller lanterns on display, there are sumptuous snacks of central Taiwan area available for visitors.

Organizers estimated that around 5 million people will come to Lukang, an ancient trade port town on the west coast, for the annual festivities.

They advised people visiting the lantern exhibition take public transportation systems like railway or bus services to avoid traffic jams and parking problems.

Shuttle buses will be provided at the high-speed rail station at Taichung City as well as the railway stations at Changhua City and Yuanlin Township to take visitors to Lukang during the period of Feb. 6-19.