The Supreme Master Ching Hai
By Taoyuan, Formosa News Team (Originally in Chinese)
The 2016 Formosa Lantern Festival was held at the High Speed Rail Station Square of Taoyuan City, Formosa, from February 22 to March 6. The festival site had six theme parks displaying 1,100 sets of lanterns covering over 30 hectares, and attracted more than 20 million visitors total.
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the need to protect the environment and our animal friends. The number of people changing to a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle has increased dramatically in Formosa, especially among the younger generation. To serve the vegetarian and vegan visitors, and to create an opportunity for non-vegetarians to try delicious plant-based cuisine, our Association members from Taoyuan and Taipei Centers rented five food stalls, and prepared 17 different delectable and affordable vegan dishes.
The activity was organized by our Taoyuan Center with help from dozens of our Association members as well as Loving Hut Huanbei Branch, Taoyuan. Not only did we use natural, organic ingredients as much as possible, we also changed our menu every day to offer a variety of healthy and tasty vegan food to the visitors. As the sole vegan booth in area C of the venue, we attracted many vegetarians and vegans, accompanied by their families, relatives and friends. To assure that the busy staff workers on duty at the 2016 Formosa Lantern Festival had the opportunity to enjoy the vegan dishes, we accepted delivery orders from them, since they could not come to our booths.
We worked with dedication in everything we did, including purchasing food, cooking, arranging the booths and designing posters. To share our love, we served the vegan dishes to the customers, with enthusiastic smiles. Whenever we heard comments from guests that it was nice to have pure vegan food at the event, we felt energized and happy.
Our deep gratitude for Master’s blessing for the opportunity to share vegan cuisine with so many loving visitors, and increase people’s interest in a plant-based diet.
