Southern Taiwan's Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival went off with a bang this year. The event in the outskirts of Tainan City has been running for over a hundred years, with participants in protective clothing facing an onslaught of bottle rockets fired into the crowd. The tradition began to honor the guardian deity Guan Yu or Guan Gong and to ask for protection from an epidemic raging through the area at the time.
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00:00It's been called one of the most dangerous festivals on earth.
00:05And watching it in action, it's easy to see why.
00:11During the annual Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival in the outskirts of Tainan City in
00:16the south, the whole point of taking part is to get blasted with bottle rockets to ward
00:22off bad luck.
00:24The most common origin story dates back over a hundred years.
00:55And as Taiwan faces its worst outbreak of the flu in years, that history feels especially
01:02relevant.
01:10Some people still come for spiritual reasons.
01:17Some are here by chance.
01:25And some, just for the thrills.
01:34But with so much chaos, people are bound to get hurt.
01:38And injuries are common.
01:55Anyone coming to the festival must prepare proper safety equipment, or stay well away
02:02from the action.
02:18It's hard to say which might be more dangerous.
02:21A plague, or swarms of flaming projectiles.
02:25And as for the bottle rockets bringing luck with every strike on your body, well, making
02:30it out of the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival with only minor bruises is lucky enough.
02:36Luffy Lee, Alex Chen, Millie Hughes, and Philip Broussard for Taiwan Plus.