# The World's Most Dangerous Fireworks Festival? > A dangerous, spectacular ritual draws thousands of brave souls in protective suits. Here's how Taiwan's Yanshui Fireworks Festival plays out. - URL: https://langandtrip.com.ua/en/article/sami-opasni-festyval-feierverkov-v-myre/ - Language: en - Published: 2025-09-11 - Categories: Culture, Historic Sites, Leisure, Taiwan, Parties, Events --- Along a narrow street in the Yanshui district of Tainan, in southwestern Taiwan, a strangely dressed crowd of thousands gathers. Everyone is kitted out in what looks like a spacesuit pieced together from scrapyard finds: a motorcycle helmet with the visor down, a cloth wrapped around the neck, fireproof clothing and thick gloves. A cacophony of religious brass music swells as palanquins carrying statues of Guan Gong, the Chinese God of War, sway through the crowd like boats on a stormy sea. The helmeted crowd starts bouncing nervously on their feet. Scattered among them are "beehives" packed with explosives, waiting to be lit. Then someone does exactly that. What begins as a spray of sparks soon turns into a roar of flaming projectiles that fly straight into the crowd or streak just over people's heads. Welcome to the Yanshui Beehive Fireworks Festival, an annual religious tradition held on the 14th and 15th days of the Lunar New Year in Tainan, Taiwan. ## Rockets killed the plague and saved a town According to local legend, the festival began in the late 19th century as a way to fight off a double disaster: an epidemic of cholera and plague that struck this trading port near the old provincial capital of Tainan. Yanshui was one of Taiwan's most important seaports at the time, thanks to its location on a now vanished network of canals. The disease ravaged the townspeople for two decades, until they called on the god Guan Gong for help by setting off thousands of fireworks. According to Lin Yi-jen, the festival director and manager of the 17th-century Wu Temple, a local shaman summoned Guan Gong, also known as the warrior god, to put an end to the suffering. "The warrior god agreed to come, but told the shaman he had to be welcomed with fireworks," Lin says. In the end, Lin claims, the sulfur in the fireworks killed the bacteria, while the loud noise scared off the rats that carried the plague. ## 'Beehives' This is, without a doubt, one of the most dangerous celebrations in the world. The "beehives" are actually launch towers packed tightly with tiny rocket-firework sticks. Some hold up to 600,000 of them. They are called beehives because the moment the tower is lit, thousands of rockets shoot out at once, like a swarm of bees stirred up in their nest. Being struck by a rocket during the festival is considered good luck. Small, tightly rolled cardboard tubes slam into people in a trail of orange sparks. Within a minute the firestorm is mostly over, and the air is thick with sulfur. Just as the adrenaline starts to fade, another beehive is wheeled in from a side street, and the explosive ritual begins all over again. ## A SpongeBob beehive brings good luck ![](https://test.langandtrip.com.ua/wp-content/uploads/de_import_uploads/june-article-image-120-1-2025.jpg) The event reaches its climax after sunset. Shen-Chi Chung, 56, and his family built two beehives for last year's festival. The smaller of the two, shaped like the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, measured more than four meters square and was loaded with 15,000 rockets. The larger one, twice the size, was a pirate ship. "I chose these designs for my grandson and to delight the other little kids," says Chung, who runs a local event-planning business. While the SpongeBob took Chung and his family two weeks to build, the pirate ship demanded a full month of work. Chung admits that, beyond altruism and religious devotion, he has another motive for building the beehives, one that is both commercial and superstitious. "I have friends who don't do this, and their businesses aren't running smoothly," Chung says. "The smaller beehive cost between 50,000 and 60,000 new Taiwan dollars (1,600 to 1,900 US dollars) to build, but it's worth it." ## The grand finale: 1.4 million rockets All of Chung's beehives are made of pine. Each section measures 1.2 square meters and is 20 centimeters deep. Each one holds about 2,000 rockets. According to festival director Lin, those who build the beehives must pray and make vows to Guan Gong for three years running before they can take part in the construction. Although building beehives is often an exclusively male affair, women can join in the work, with certain conditions attached. For the Chung clan, "women can make beehives as long as they aren't pregnant or on their period. If any woman breaks these rules, the rockets will be far more harmful." The first evening has a more local flavor, while tourists flock in on the second evening, when the fireworks reach their peak. Three enormous beehives, the first two stuffed with 400,000 rockets and the last with 600,000, are launched into the crowd dressed in protective gear. Dignitaries watch from a stand behind a mesh screen roughly 20 meters tall and 50 meters wide. Think this is madness? To Lin, today's festivals seem tame compared with the ones from his youth. "Older folks like me aren't afraid of fireworks," he says. "When I was a little boy, we held the rocket sticks and let them explode right out of our hands. We didn't even wear any protection. We thought it was so much fun that we ran around naked."