The sky lantern village in a coal-mining gorge — thousands of paper lanterns float into the sky over a river canyon on Lantern Festival night
Pingxi is a former coal-mining village in a steep gorge of the Keelung River, about 40km from Taipei, that has become one of Taiwan's most photographed destinations thanks to a tradition of releasing hand-painted sky lanterns. The village sits at the end of the Pingxi Branch Railway Line — a narrow-gauge track that once carried coal now carries day-trippers — and the gorge setting, with moss-covered stone walls, waterfalls, and a river shallow enough to wade, is atmospheric year-round. The sky lantern release happens daily in smaller quantities (vendors sell ready-to-write lanterns on the mai…
Pingxi's coal mines opened in the Japanese colonial period (1920s) and closed in the 1980s as deposits were exhausted. The area might have simply depopulated like many mining communities except that the railway was preserved, the gorge scenery attracted hikers, and the sky lantern tradition — originally a military signalling device reinterpreted as a wish-sending ceremony — was revived and promoted as a tourist attraction in the 1990s. The result is a village that went from economic collapse to becoming a required stop on every Taiwan itinerary within a single generation.