“Turtle-Granting” is one of Penghu’s traditional folk custom events. In order to pray for abundant harvest and safety in the coming year, the various temples in Penghu organize the Turtle-Granting pray for blessing and make a wish event on a grand scale during the Lantern Festival period. In order for visitors to sense the bustling atmosphere of Penghu’s Lantern Festival, to experience the cultural content of the Turtle-Granting event, as well as to enjoy the leisure fun of vacation in small towns and villages on the sea island, the Penghu National Scenic Area Administration especially organized the “2019 Penghu Lantern Festival Turtle-Granting Carnival” with Wen Ao Zushi Temple on February 16th, 2019 as an opening to this year’s Penghu Lantern Festival.
 
While all regions around Taiwan are creating new ideas to attract visitors during the New Year and Lantern Festival period, the traditional, natural and original Penghu Lantern Festival Turtle-Granting Pray for Blessing event has also become the new fun for intellectual experts to explore, search the root and experience the New Year. The event content this year included 800 Penghu Prosperity Turtle souvenir coin sets blessed by the Wen Ao Zushi Temple, which is available for the people at the event site to obtain via throwing the moon blocks; there was also the opening ceremony for Penghu Hao-Ke – the mascot for the 2019 Taiwan Small Town Ramble. Besides obtaining souvenir coins via throwing the moon blocks, domestic and international famous balloon master – Mr. Chia-Chiao Lin was also invited to perform at the event and teach how to make balloon turtles, while the DIY activities on turtle-shaped pineapple buns and turtle-shaped cakes further added an interesting touch. The activities for the evening party included battle drums, temple parasol, music performance and lantern riddles,etc. Wen-Cheng Chen was invited to act as event spokesperson, and the event atmosphere was extraordinarily lively.
 
Tsung-Min Hsu, director for the Penghu National Scenic Area Administration indicated that “The Lantern Festival is much more bustling than New Year for the people of Penghu”, it can be seen the importance of Lantern Festival to the people of Penghu. The Turtle-Granting folk custom of Penghu is to pray for safety, those who obtain the sacred combination with one flat block and one convex block when throwing the moon blocks will be able to take home the various types of “Turtles”, symbolizing work safety and health for the coming year, and must also provide the equivalent or even more quantity of what one has earned this year for the next year in order to pass down the fortune to the next person. Turtle-granting items include turtle-shaped cakes and red glutinous rice turtle-shaped cakes in the old days, to the rice and noodles stacked in turtle-shape, the “golden turtle” created using gold and the various types of daily commodities during the recent years, and along with the change of time, the turtle-granting event is fused with cultural inheritance and local folk customs, thereby introducing more diversified fun to the Lantern Festival. Taiwan’s Lantern Festival includes “sky lanterns in the north, beehive firecracker in the south, Handan in the east and turtle-granting in the west”, where the “turtle-granting in the west” is the praise to Penghu’s Lantern Festival, as well as the expectation of sustainable inheritance and carrying forward.
 
Other than this, in collaboration with the experience promotion of the “2019 Taiwan Small Town Ramble” to attract more tourists to visit the various small towns and villages in Penghu, the Penghu National Scenic Area Administration further expanded the marketing of Penghu Lantern Festival Turtle-Granting culture via the excitement and charisma of the Lantern Festival event, and has especially produced and provided 10 thousand sets of “Prosperity Turtle Souvenir Coin” to 10 temples which collaborated with the event, including Penghu Mazu Temple, so that the visitors may interact with the turtle-granting activity, thereby allowing pilgrims to become visitors, and let the turtle-granting culture to become well-received amongst visitors. Moreover, in order for visitors to experience the cultural content of the turtle-granting and pray for blessing event, exquisite Lantern Festival Turtle-Granting Tour Guide Brochure has been designed in combination with a diversification of tourism resources, including Penghu’s traditional culture, folk custom characteristics and natural sceneries, etc. It is integrated with the launch of the event on “Obtaining Penghu Hao-Ke figurine with the collection of Lantern Festival stamps”, hoping that each tourist visiting Penghu may feel the added joy through receiving a small gift in order to take home with them loads of happy memories.