Since Jimi Moe and Wade Davis threw the first Spring Scream music festival for about 300 fans near the Taiwanese beach town of Kenting in 1995, the event's popularity has soared.
Police estimate that last year about 100,000 visitors flooded into the area over the 10 days of the festival, many of them young Taiwanese coming for at least a half a dozen big outdoor parties and concerts, as well as families arriving for the beginning of the beach season marked by the Ching Ming grave-sweeping day.
Moe describes it as 'Fort Lauderdale party central meets Taiwan's biggest night market' and 'Vegas without the casinos'.
This year, the scale of the music events continues to grow. From April 5 to 7, parties called Spring Scream, Spring Wave and Spring Love will burst into life, with about 200 acts playing at Spring Scream's traditional indie band showcase, including Mando-pop stars Stanley Huang Li-xing, Faith Yang Nai-wen, and Cheer Chen Chi-chen, Ibiza dance music phenomenon Cafe del Mar in their Taiwan debut and the old-school beats of Japanese hip hop maestro DJ Krush.
Hong Kong bands have made regular appearances at the event over the years and this year local acts will include the Sea Monsters, Snoblind, the Darlings and the Train. Andy Warburton and Jim Breese from Britain's Hed Kandi label and two more DJs from parent label Ministry of Sound will play at a fourth event, the Moonlight Party.
But because organisers have to obtain permission from local authorities, the event has at times seemed threatened - which may sound odd to anyone who has attended any of the Kenting concerts over the past dozen years.