Hiking while collecting sky lanterns — killing multiple birds with one stone. For two consecutive years, Songguang Li in Xinyi District has teamed up with hiking clubs to organize mountain clean-ups after the Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival. They venture into deep mountain areas that are hard for cleaning crews and elderly locals who rely on collecting lanterns to make a living to reach, picking up the remnants of fallen lanterns in the forests. They even made their own tools to help with the task and managed to collect over 500 lanterns in just one day, earning them the title of eco-warriors.
Xu Yin-ying, who has been hiking for 20 years, established the “Dudu Hiking Club” seven years ago with fellow nature enthusiasts, most of whom are residents of Songguang Li in Xinyi District. The group, which meets weekly for hikes, sees the abundance of sky lantern debris across the Pingxi area as environmentally damaging and has long made it a habit to pick up litter during their treks. Last year, at the urging of local chief Tsai Fu-lai, they launched an annual mountain clean-up event.
“We specialize in collecting sky lanterns from deep in the mountains!” said Tsai Fu-lai. To retrieve lanterns fallen into the forests, they fashioned long hooks tied to freshly cut bamboo poles to pull down lanterns tangled in trees (see photo, courtesy of the Dudu Hiking Club). The team hiked through sites such as Shuliao Jian Mountain, Xiaozi Mountain, and Cimu Peak. Some were responsible for hooking the lanterns, others for disassembling them before bringing them down the mountain for the sanitation department to recycle.
And checking out the wide variety of wishes written on the lanterns is a small joy of the cleanup. Xu Yin-ying said that this year, the most common wishes were “win the lottery” and “get rich quick.” Tsai Fu-lai mentioned that he once found a lantern with a phone number written on it, along with other heartfelt messages like “I love you” and “I hope my husband stops losing his temper.” He even took photos of some and shared them with his wife as a playful “borrowed flower offering.”
Tsai Fu-lai also noted that some team members have been scratched by the long hooks, and others have accidentally fallen into streams while retrieving lanterns near the water. He hopes these clean-up activities will inspire everyone to reflect on the importance of environmental protection.