Ghost month

The seventh lunar month — usually falling in August or September — is ghost month. The gates of the underworld are held to open on the first day and close on the last, and in between the dead move among the living.

Practically, this means offerings of food and paper money set outside shops and homes, incense, and a list of things people avoid: swimming, weddings, moving house, starting a business, buying a car, hanging washing out at night.

Why Keelung

In the mid-nineteenth century, immigrant communities from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou in Fujian fought repeatedly and violently over land and water in northern Taiwan. In 1855, after a particularly bad round of killing, community leaders agreed to stop.

The settlement was this: instead of fighting, the two sides would compete annually over who could put on the better Zhongyuan ceremony for the dead of both communities. Surname clans took turns hosting — eleven at first, fifteen today — in a fixed rotation that still runs.

A festival explicitly created as an alternative to violence, in 1855, still operating on the same rotation. That is the reason this one is different from every other ghost month observance in Taiwan.

What happens

On the twelfth day of the month, lanterns are lit at the Zhupu Altar to open the way. On the fourteenth, the main event: a parade of illuminated floats through the city, ending at Wanghai Alley beach, where large paper water lantern houses — elaborate model buildings, one per clan — are carried into the sea and set alight.

They are burned so that they light the way for the spirits of those who drowned. How far each house floats before it burns is read as a sign for the clan that made it.

At the end of the month the gates close, and a final ceremony sends the dead back.

If your call lands in it

Cruise calls to Keelung in August and September can coincide, and if yours does, the city is worth the whole day. The festival is designated a national cultural asset and the water lantern night is one of the most photographed events in Taiwan.

If it does not, the Keelung Midsummer Ghost Festival Museum in Zhongzheng Park explains the whole thing, but the city lists it as closed for renovation with no reopening date. Check before you climb up.