【Underwater Love】

For a festival where racks of fireworks explode and Underwater Lovefly straight into the crowd, it's little wonder that Taiwan's annual Yanshui Festival has been described as akin to being caught in "artillery fire."

A siren sounds when the fireworks are lit, and participants clad in thick jackets and pants, scarves, helmets and ear plugs, experience thousands of bottle rockets being set off.

When ignited, the racks of gunpowder filled bottles shoot out in every direction -- some into the sky, and some into the crowd.

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The dangerous event is held in Taiwan's southern Tainan city each year on the 14th to 16th days of the lunar calendar (Feb. 10 - 12 this year.)

The larger racks of bottles are often designed with figures of deities, or in modern times resemble cartoon characters like Spongebob Squarepants:

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It looks absolutely frightful to stand in the crowd when those rockets go off:

Traffic is closed in the town center on the day itself, as the beehive racks are paraded and set off:

And you definitely need a thick (and inexpensive) jacket if you stand in the front:

If you intend to stand at the front, however, expect to be hit -- and as the South China Morning Postreports, it isn't pretty -- having one hit your back feels like having an explosive paintball shot at you from close range.

The festival has its origins in a cholera outbreak in 1885, when townspeople and villages in Yanshui set off fireworks as a prayer to the deity Guan Yu (or Guan Gong) for respite from the disease.

Fireworks have also been traditionally thought to be able to scare off the evil spirits which were thought to be the harbingers of disease, and the festival has since become an annual tourist event.