Halloween in Tianmu

I wasn't sure exactly what to expect while we were packing up to move to Taiwan.  I wondered if we would still be celebrating the same holidays we did when we were back in the States.  One of my all time favorite holidays is Halloween because you get to dress up, get creative, and pretend to be someone else, or something else, for a day.  I wasn't as prepared this year with my or my family's costume.  Sadly we didn't dress up with a family theme.  It's also becoming harder to do that now that my kids are getting older and more opinionated.

In Tianmu there were several Halloween celebrations taking place, which I mostly found out via fliers and posters up on the walls of various stores.  I tried to check out the website listed on the posters, but I can't read Chinese (yet), so I had to rely on Google Translate to help me figure out what was going on.  In greater Taipei there were even more festivities.  There was plenty to do in Tianmu so we just stayed in this area. 

Intersection of Zhongcheng Road and Shidong Road in the middle of the day

 Tianmu Sports Complex is filled with tents full of Halloween festivities

Getting there.

Parking is very hard for this large event.  Most lots filled up early and I heard that several people took the MRT to the Zhishan station.  From there you can take a bus, but even so all the buses were packed.  Your best bet, and especially if you had a young child, is probably taking a cab from the Zhishan MRT station to the Tianmu Sports complex.  

Walking is also another option.  It's about a 15-20 minute walk, which is tough for those with really young kids.  The sidewalks aren't smooth, but if you are okay to stroll your pram/buggy/stroller on to the street every now and then the walk isn't too bad.  However, if you plan to trick-or-treat with your stroller, keep in mind how crowded everything is.  Having the option to wear your little one is helpful and use your stroller as the catch-all is helpful.  

Tianmu Halloween Festival.

This year it was reported to have over 100,000 participants coming through Tianmu for these Halloween festivities at the Tianmu Sports Park.  Parts of Zhongcheng road were closed off due to the sheer amount of foot traffic that hit these roads.  Vendors with giant tents were passing out samples of their food or beverage included well known chocolate and drink companies.  Lines for those samples were quite long and for us, we skipped those.  Instead we found ourselves sitting on the large stairs facing the giant rows of smaller vendors, schools, and stalls.  People watching was great in this area.  

If you have small children that end up falling asleep, the stairs are a great place to sit and rest as most of this area was complete in the shade.  Additionally just a few steps away behind the stairs are bathrooms and water refilling stations.  (Hopefully you brought your own water bottle!)  The playground of the Sports Park were so congested we didn't even attempt to go.  From where we were we could see costumed children hanging off every square inch of the play structure.  

To the right of all these tents was an open field that was hosting a sports activity with giant inflated balls.  Kids were in the center of the balls, much like one wearing a sumo-wrestler costume and running around bouncing off each other.  It's probably best for kids ages 8+ but it's still fun for the younger ones to watch.  

Trick-or-treating.

In Tianmu Halloween celebrations start the weekend before Halloween actually takes place.  This year Halloween fell on a Tuesday, but celebrations started taking place Friday night.  While I was out running errands we saw a few trick-or-treaters walk by along the streets.  Saturday mid-day until evening felt like the prime day for candy collecting, followed by few young children on Sunday, during the day.  It's nice to spend the weekend celebrating Halloween, as opposed to cramming it all into the evening hours after you come home from a long day of work or school.  

One big difference from this trick-or-treating experience we had was that we visited stores and other business establishments to ask for candy.  Residences don't have a custom of handing out candy, unless you live in a large high-rise apartment complex but even so there are few and far between that participate.  Businesses participate by hanging a paper jack-o-lantern or other Halloween decorations in their store window to signify that they are participating in the passing out of candy.  

Be prepared for some stores to under-estimate the amount of candy needed, as several establishments we went to did run out by 4pm.  One particular establishment ran out of candy, but we weren't able to tell because they still had their Halloween decorations outside their store.  My kids went into the store and the store owner was not able to communicate with my children that he ran out of candy so my kids stood in line.  This particular store was an ice-cream shop and my kids just pointed to the ice cream they liked best.  By this point the store only had three flavors of ice cream left: chocolate, hazelnut, and peanut.  All four kids (mine plus a friend) pointed to chocolate and received their ice cream on a cone, ready to head out the door.  I went in to find out what was taking them so long and the lady behind the counter said they hadn't paid for the ice cream.  I explained in my broken Mandarin that the kids thought that they were handing out the ice cream for free because it wasn't clear to them that they ran out of candy.  The kids had no idea and likely, still have no idea that your truly shelled out some dough for those cones.  Luckily my kids were happy to let mommy have a little bit of their chocolate ice cream cones with them.  

In the evening when we went trick-or-treating, why yes, we did a total of three rounds of trick-or-treating, my kids had a different experience.  Towards the end of their evening, around 7:30pm when it was closer to dinner my kids, along with their friends, came across Dominos Pizza on Zhongshan North road.  Some of the American food establishments didn't decorate but were handing out candy.  My kids were with a big posse so they went into Dominos Pizza to trick-or-treat.  At that time they had run out of candy, but the guy behind the counter asked us if the kids would like some pizza instead?  Because of our earlier experience I was a bit wary, but he ended up giving us a Hawaiian pizza (no, we couldn't choose the flavor) for free.  We took it outside, sat on the little bench, and six hungry trick-or-treaters ended up calling that dinner.  It was actually perfect because all the kids were hungry but didn't want to stop collecting candy.  Because we couldn't actually pick the flavor of pizza, no on fought, and all the kids were appreciative.  On top of that, the kids said it was some of the tastiest pizza that they have had and one kid said they now like Hawaiian pizza after this experience!  

Costumes.

While in Taipei, I'm sure there are several places to find them.  A friend of mine even told me that places will rent out costumes if you don't want to purchase one, however, because of language barriers and not being able to read, I wasn't able to find it.  I did, however, find two places to pick up ready-made costumes for fairly reasonable prices.

Carrefour.  At my local Carrefour store they had an entire section full of ready-made costumes for children and to a lesser extent, adults available.  Their selection is probably a quarter or smaller than my local Target store from back home, but since we are not stateside this will have to do.  Carrefour carries entire costumes, accessories, plastic pumpkin candy buckets, and more.  They started carrying Halloween items late September and then throughout October.

Unnamed store, located here.  The second place I saw costumes in large quantities was in this store, which I didn't quite catch the name of, located between Tasters and Lili on Zhongshan North Road, section 6, about a block away from the Taipei American School.  They were selling complete children's costumes for $190 NT (under $6.50 USD).  

Halloween candy!