A Few More Photos

I guess it was a special day a couple days ago. People told me it was the last day of the Lunar New Year Festival and it was the Lantern Festival. The only thing is I am not really sure if they are supposed to fall on the same day or not. I heard 3 different versions of the timing. I should have tried out my Chinese language to get down the timing of the days, but then I don't really care that much.

What I do care about is big time fireworks. For some reason, it is more important to scare the demons on this day than on the first day of the New Year Festival. So all of the 7-11's stocked up with the best bombs money can buy. I walked downtown for the festivities. People were getting hit with fireworks left and right. I saw one mom yelling at her little boy because apparently he had the mortars aimed the wrong way.

People were launching launching paper lanterns with flames that gave them lift. It was really cool to watch all of these red glowing lanterns floating over the city with fireworks going off everywhere. I guess no one is worried where they come down or what they might burn to the ground when they do. Sorry, I couldn't get a good photo.

I did get some photos of some Joes with an arsenal in the middle of an intersection. They had some blow torches and an endless supply of serious fireworks flowing out of the mini-mart. I am not sure who was more at risk, the pedestrians, the firework technicians or the motorists. Enjoy:

A Few Photos

Here are a few photos. I hope I get some better ones later but for now it's a little taste of Taiwan.

This is a typical restaurant. I have been eating in places like this a lot. They only boil stuff. I get lots of beef noodles and seafood noodles. They also do wonton type things and vegetables. They also have lots of cold dishes like tofu and animal parts that they put on a scale and then chop up for you.

The National Musuem in Taipei. Most of the stuff here came from the Forbidden City in Beijing. It really irritates the Chinese government that Chiang Kai Shek took all the best stuff from China. The funny thing is that the artifacts almost definitely would have been destroyed when Mao flipped out and had the Cultural Revolution.

This guy is in Hsinchu. That must be a 10 foot tall Thumbs Up.

Just to give you an idea of how lush it is. This is a park in the city. Actually this photo doesn't really convey the reality so forget it. It's really leafy and green in Taiwan though. Trust me.

Hsinchu Harbor. This is about 10 minutes driving from my apartment. They have a good seafood market and jogging trail.

Longshan Temple in Taipei. There are temples everywhere in Taiwan. Even a small temple/shrine in the home is common. It is a stark contrast to the mainland because Mao decided it would be a good idea to knock down all the temples. Genius.

The temples in Taiwan typically have these really colorful cartoon characters on the rooftops. This one is in Beipu about an hour away from Hsinchu.

Rats, KTV and 6 Year Old Pyrotechnicians

It is Chinese New Year time. 2008 is the Year of the Rat. I guess it is a good year for wealth and marriage. But I think the translation is messed up because almost everything is good for wealth and marriage.

It is one of the most important times of the year for Asia. It’s like Christmas for western people. I got invited to New Year’s Eve dinner with a local family. So that’s like inviting a Chinese guy into your home for Christmas Eve and all the dude can really say in English is “Merry Christmas, I am very happy to meet you”. How cool and hilarious would that be? Well, that was me.

It is very important to light off lots of fireworks at the New Year to ward off bad spirits. I think last year I wrote that it was to ward off dragons. I found out later that dragons are actually really lucky. So it was a translation error that I am now retracting. I dare you to guess how many “facts” I have written over the past year are completely off base…..

Anyway, people have been blowing off professional grade fireworks for the last two weeks. At the local family’s house, they put a kid who looked like he was 10 in charge of the pyrotechnics. His assistant was probably about 6 and they were using the back porch as a platform. The best is when a firework accidentally shoots sidways and the kids run and hide and then start laughing and wrestling around in the dirt before lighting another bomb. Since the children had firework duty, the adults were free to chug wine and eat way too much food indoors.

I actually attended two dinners since the guys were brothers who lived next door to each other. One guy was pretty excited to drink wine with foreigners. Lots of neighbors and relatives kept stopping by and they wanted to chug with foreigners as well. So the brothers had to go find more wine in some dusty, cockroach ridden boxes. The wine was pretty crappy but the food was a nice combination of seafood, pork and pork stomach….

After dinner, everyone retired to the “living room” of one of the houses for karaoke and mahjong. Actually, the living room had roll up garage doors and in addition to the couches and entertainment center, they also had 5 scooters, an office and lots of pump repair supplies (the brother is in the pump business).

I was learning mahjong and singing karaoke at the same time. It was very difficult to understand the mahjong instructions since we had to crank karaoke to 10 in order to hear the singing over the bombs going off outside. With the high ceilings and concrete floors, it made for a fairly insane after dinner entertainment. I do understand money and it turns out that mahjohng is a gambling game and you should yell whenever someone wins or loses. Oh yeah, since there aren’t heaters in Taiwan and it had been in the low 50’s lately, I didn’t take my jacket off the whole time. So I was yelling, singing, freezing and paying out money to people who thought I was a pretty funny side show.

So there you have a little taste of a Taiwan version of Christmas dinner. Let me tell you that after all of the crappy wine, KTV cranked to 10, ridiculously confusing mahjong instructions (in Chinese and broken English) and bombs going off on all sides, I had a pretty bad headache by the time I made it home….

I guess Taiwan is similar to China in that if it is not loud, confusing and slightly insane, it’s not worth doing.

Happy New Year!