Pingtung County Rural Regeneration Lantern Area Brings Communities' Life Stories to Life

"The Rural Regeneration Lantern Area tells the stories of Pingtung County's rural regeneration communities." The 2019 Taiwan Lantern Festival's Rural Regeneration Lantern Area was designed around the distinctive stories of each community, creating a joyful movement of rural regeneration, especially the 12-meter-tall "Steel Farmer" and "Satoyama Symbiosis Tree" works, which symbolize the farmers who silently guard the land, coexisting and prospering with nature in a land-friendly way. Outlined through light art, the lantern works are super eye-catching.

County Magistrate Pan Meng-an said that the Rural Regeneration Lantern Area breaks away from the past situation where each lantern installation told its own separate story. Combining community residents and artists under the theme "Rural Movements Beneath Dawu Mountain," the entire lantern area is divided into three different story scenes: "Land," "Interaction," and "Satoyama," conveying the efforts Pingtung County has made in the process of community rural regeneration, allowing visitors to witness together the beauty of Pingtung's communities, full of vitality and stories.

The Rural Regeneration Lantern Area was planned by the Urban and Rural Development Department of the Pingtung County Government, which invited 20 rural regeneration communities, 9 young artists, and poets to collaborate with Shu-Te University on the creations. The lantern area works include "Satoyama Symbiosis Tree," "Passing Through to Welcome Fortune," "Walking and Reading Pingtung," "A Hundred Turns of Happiness," "Satoyama Prosperity," and "Leisure Art Lantern Group," presenting the communities' rich and diverse living characteristics and stories.

The Urban and Rural Development Department of Pingtung County stated that, to let more people experience the rural movements beneath Dawu Mountain, from February 28 to March 3 every night at 7:30 PM, there will be wonderful performances from rural regeneration communities full of vitality and local spirit, including grand drum formations, samba drum dances, Song Jiang battle formations, the Gong Bei Po folk performance, war drum teams, Hakka lion formations, and the shore-seine fishing musical, among others.