Travel Date: 2026/03/07
Fire Horse Festival in Lucao – One of the Most Intense Festivals I’ve Seen in Taiwan. Well, because I don't dare to go to the Beehive Festival in Yanshui, Tainan, I guess this might be the most dramatic thing I’ll ever see lol.
Last weekend (March 7th) we went to Lucao in Chiayi County to see the traditional Fire Horse Festival (火馬祭) at Yuanshan Temple (嘉義鹿草圓山宮). I had seen photos before, but experiencing it in person was something completely different.
It was spectacular, loud, chaotic, and honestly a little bit shocking.
About the Festival
The Fire Horse Festival is actually a series of events leading up to the main ceremony. These activities include:
- Eating peace dumplings for good fortune
- Drinking traditional herbal wine
- Passing under temple palanquins for blessings
- Making DIY fire horses
- Temple processions around the town
- Praying for fortune coins and peace offerings
These rituals bring the community together and extend the celebration far beyond the single night of the fire ceremony.
Temple committee members and local volunteers work together to craft the horse by hand — weaving the frame and covering it with straw. The process intentionally recreates the way villagers would have made the original fire horses centuries ago.
This handmade craftsmanship adds an important cultural dimension to the ritual, preserving traditional skills alongside religious belief.
Normally, the Fire Horse ceremony takes place on Lantern Festival night (the 15th day of the Lunar New Year).
However, because the Taiwan Lantern Festival was held in Chiayi County in 2026, Yuanshan Temple consulted the temple deity Wang Sun Da Shi Gong (王孫大使公) and decided to postpone the large Fire Horse ceremony so more people could attend. It was held on a Saturday instead of during the week, and I am so grateful for that — otherwise we would not have made it there.
The festival is an old local tradition that dates back to the Qing Dynasty. In the past, people believed burning a “fire horse” could drive away disease and bad luck from the village. Villagers would build horses out of straw or paper and burn them in a ritual so the gods’ soldiers could carry away epidemics and misfortune.
The ceremony disappeared for almost 60 years, but it was revived in 2021 and has become one of the most unusual festivals in southern Taiwan!
Something I Did Not Expect…
Before the horses were burned, a ritual took place that I definitely did not expect to see.
A spirit medium — a person believed to be temporarily possessed by the temple deity — walked around the horses performing a ceremony. He was spitting alcohol onto the horses, almost like blessing them before the fire.
Then the ritual became even more intense.
He started hitting his own back with different weapons as part of the ritual. Eventually his back was bleeding, but he continued the ceremony while people watched quietly. It was very powerful and honestly quite shocking if you have never seen something like this before.
Taiwanese temple rituals can sometimes be very intense, but this was definitely one of the strongest I have seen.
I had only watched some of these rituals on YouTube before, when my husband accidentally discovered a channel about temple rituals and spirit mediums. I watched a few and was quite shocked — actually I asked my husband to stop watching those things because I didn’t have a very good feeling about it.
Preparing the Fire Horses
After the ritual finished, the horses were prepared for the main event (放火馬).
They were covered with gasoline, many strings of firecrackers, and long fuses running through the structure. You could already imagine what would happen next.
When they finally lit the fuse, everything happened very quickly.
The horse suddenly burst into flames, firecrackers started exploding everywhere, and the flames shot high into the night sky. The heat became extremely strong almost immediately and the firecrackers were shooting in every direction.
Some people quickly stepped back, and a few even moved away completely because the fire and explosions became so intense.
It was chaotic, loud, and absolutely spectacular.
At the end there were even fireworks, but I was shielding my eyes from the flying pieces so I didn’t really look up at the sky. Luckily we caught it on video though.
About Yuanshan Temple
Yuanshan Temple (圓山宮) in Lucao Township is dedicated to Wang Sun Da Shi Gong (王孫大使公), a local deity believed to protect the community and drive away evil spirits and disease.
Yuanshan Temple has been an important religious center for local residents for many generations. Like many Taiwanese temples, it’s not only a place for worship but also a place where the community gathers for traditional events and festivals.
The Fire Horse ritual is one of the temple’s most unique traditions. It originally came from customs that were once common in the coastal areas of Fujian, where people believed that burning a “fire horse” would allow divine soldiers to carry away epidemics and disasters.
For a long time the ceremony had disappeared, but in 2021 the temple revived the Fire Horse Festival, bringing the tradition back to Lucao after almost sixty years. Since then the event has grown bigger every year and more people come to see this spectacular ritual.
Another part of the ceremony that caught my attention was the spirit medium ritual.
In many Taiwanese temples there are people called “tang-ki” (乩童) or spirit mediums. During certain ceremonies they believe the temple deity temporarily enters their body so they can communicate the god’s will and perform rituals.
Little Sum Up
Even though the scene looks dramatic, the meaning behind it is actually very positive.
People believe the burning fire horse takes away bad luck, illness, and misfortune, leaving the community with a fresh start and blessings for the new year.
Watching the flames, hearing the constant explosions of firecrackers, and feeling the heat from the fire made the whole experience feel very powerful.
Taiwan has many famous fire festivals like the Beehive Fireworks in Yanshui or the Bombing Dragon in Miaoli, but the Fire Horse Festival in Lucao feels very different.
It doesn’t feel like a performance for tourists. It feels like a real local belief that people still take seriously.
For me, it was definitely one of the most memorable and surprising cultural events I’ve seen in Taiwan.
And also one of the hottest ones — literally.
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