3. Yanshui Beehive Rockets Festival, Taiwan

There is a customary belief that being bombed by the firecrackers wards off bad luck. [Photo/Australiaplus.com/Chinese]

Common sense dictates that, most of the time, you should not stand in the way of a lit firecracker.

But on the 15th day of the first lunar month, tens of thousands of participants flock to Yanshui in western Taiwan to do just that.

The event - during which beehive firecrackers are set off among a crowd of spectators - commemorates a cholera epidemic more than a century ago, with a customary belief that being bombed by the firecrackers wards off bad luck.

Participants are encouraged to wear a scarf around their neck to stop rockets shooting up under their helmets.

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