Wrap up tight, then stand inside the fire

By nightfall the temple front is already packed, everyone wrapped tight from head to toe — thick coat, helmet, towel wound round the neck, cotton gloves, only two eyes left showing. Incense and gunpowder mingle in the air, acrid and faintly sweet; the palanquin has not yet come, but the taut silence has already settled, like the heaviest moment before a storm. A glance traded with the few friends who came along, no one speaking — what is about to happen, everyone knows; and to back out now is already too late.

The first blast, and before anyone can react the next second is fireworks on every side. The instant the beehive tower is lit, tens of thousands of bottle rockets fire at once, hissing — shh, shh, shh — straight into the crowd, striking helmets, striking coats, sparks tearing bright skittering lines through the dark. The gunpowder smoke stings the eyes shut, the noise too loud to hear one's own heartbeat, only to feel it racing faster than the rockets. Head down, body curled, the rockets bursting one by one all around, each landing solid on the body, like a scalding rain poured straight over the head.

Yanshui's beehive fireworks fall on the night of the Lantern Festival; wherever the palanquin's procession goes, a beehive tower is lit. This is the most unreasonable kind of revelry in Taiwan — no safe distance, no place for a spectator: either wrap up and stand in, or fall back to the edge. Legend traces the custom to a cholera plague a century ago, when villagers set off fireworks to escort Lord Guan out on procession and drive the sickness away — the more fireworks, the more flourishing, the more peace. So this is not random; it is a rite that turns fear into courage — the more afraid, the more one must stand in.

Nearby an old man, bundled airtight, at the densest of the fire opens his arms and goes to meet it instead, his whole body wrapped in flame — a posture only the locals have, receiving the rockets as a blessing. Following him, lift the head a little too; and for that one instant the fire is no longer an assault, but a kind of fierce blessing, hurled down over face and head, asking to be caught.

The moment the fireworks stop, the world goes suddenly quiet. The ground is carpeted with red rocket-husks, the air thick beyond clearing with gunpowder. Helmet off, hair matted with sweat, ears still ringing, hearing nothing clearly for a while. The few friends look at one another and all laugh, a little foolishly — no one can quite say how those ten minutes were survived.

On the way back that day, almost no one spoke. Yet the feeling of having stood into the fire together and walked out alive together still clings, like that gunpowder smell that will not wash off. I think you too will understand: some revelry must be paid for with the whole body — and what it buys is not a video, but a thing between a few people that need never again be said aloud.