Sanjay community, one of Yunlin agriculture expo highlighted community, celebrated 2013 Straw Festival on Dec. 11 in the straw field of Dapi Township. Mingping Xie, the mayor of Dapi Township indicates that Sanjay community utilizes the straws that seems to be useless. They made the straws into various of creative product. This shows the energy of community folk arts, brings the tourist into village. The activity was also targeted as a warm-up section for 2013 Yunlin Agriculture Expo.
Though it was raining during the opening of the straw festival, the rain didnt put down the fire in visitors heart. Thousands of citizens of Dapi Township, Sue-chih Fen the county magistrate, Dongsong Chen the director of planning department, Musheng Xu the director of news department, Mingping Xie the town mayor and Shuju Chen the county representative as well as Qiuzu Wang and Dongfu Cai as local representative joined the opening of the festival. They walk through the straw maze together and experience fun village culture.
Dongsong Chen the director of planning department of Yunlin County Government indicates that in the country community dirty space improving competition nominate list, Yunlin held 7 places from the top ten of the list. Sanjay and Xizhen won the prize of best community. This means that communities in Yunlin had great improvement and showed great momentous and built solid foundation for 2013 Yunlin Agriculture Expo.
Mingping Xie the town mayor indicates that the straw maze was designed by the invited artist Chunxiong Li and was built by community members. The maze was 60 meters long and 40 meters wide. The straw of compressed straw brick that forms the maze was collected from more than 10 arcs of straw field and weighted more than 10 tons. He also said that the maze represent the fun of exploring in everyones childhood. Its has great attractions to couples.
Wanchun Lin the director of Sanjay Community Development Association mentioned that, in order to welcome visitors from entire country, the community built a pair of 102-meters-long straw Chinese dragons at the entrance of the village. The straw dragons have solar panels installed on it, theyll have light ceremony on Dec. 28, they welcomes everyone to join. There tourist can appreciate straw made artwork, experience farmer life, DIY straw pieces of art and merge into the nature.
Except for the maze, therere also other kinds of gigantic straw installed artworks at the exhibition, many citizens were attracted by those. The famous entertainment TV show Variety Get Together from Formosa TV also joined into the event.