Pingxi Lantern Festival

February 7th, the school chartered a bunch of buses to take students to go to Pingxi, about an hour bus ride east, to participate in the Sky Lantern Festival. It is a rural township in the eastern part of Taipei county. I went with Jered, Nono, and a couple friends I know through them. After going with the whole school group to the spot in a field next to the school (where we'd later set off lanterns together) and being told to meet back at a specific time, we were on our own for a while.

We were a little hungry, so we did what everybody does in almost any part of Taiwan, we grabbed some street food. I remember getting sausages (on a stick with garlic) and takoyaki, something I've had a few times. Takoyaki (or octopus balls) is a popular Japanese dumpling made of batter, diced or whole baby octopus, tempura scraps, pickled ginger, and green onion, topped with okonomiyaki sauce, green laver, mayonnaise, and katsuobushi (fish shavings), originating from Osaka. Always tasty, and chewy...



Jered and I decided that day would be a good time to try some Gaoliang, a Chinese/Taiwanese liquor made from sorghum. The first bottle we got was 33% alcohol, and it went down smooth. We also bought a couple of our own sky lanterns to let off. The idea with these is that people write down their wishes on the lantern for the coming year, then you light up the 'fuel' on the bottom (newspaper and kerosene?), hold it for a minute, and watch it fly away. People had written everything from health for friends and family, to getting rich, to getting a new job, to 'long live Taiwan'. I don't remember exactly what I wrote, but then again, I don't remember what I wished for the last time I blew out birthday candles, so...


When we got back to the field and it was our turn to set off the lanterns, we got a pleasant surprise. Ma Ying-Jiu, the president of Taiwan, gave a couple-minute speech about 15 to 20 feet away from us. It was pretty cool.

Yilan

Over the Chinese New Year break, I had a chance to go to Yilan, a county (also a city in the county) on the east coast of Taiwan. Ray and Anna invited me to go with them, and they even let me stay in their hotel room, so that was pretty cool. Yilan consists of mountains on the west and flatlands along the coast, so we had to drive through some highway tunnels on the way there, including a 12.1km long one. One cool thing I saw on the way there was some cemeteries. No headstones, but a lot of little shrines and altars, since the Chinese are into ancestor worship, I wish I had gotten a picture. The first thing we did when we got there was get some food. We went to a restaurant where there was a fine selection of organs (hearts, livers, necks, etc.), among other things, but we kept it pretty mild, just fish ball soup and some rice with, beef, chicken wings, seaweed, and dried tofu.

After eating, we went to check out a couple trails. The first one was a bunch of paved walkways and steps with chinese-style gazebos with benches scattered around. We got to check out a few small waterfalls on this trail, which you can see in my picasa pics. The second one we walked on had a paved road zigzagging up the side of the mountain, along with a wooded path on the side of the moutain branching off. This trail afforded some wonderful views of Yilan. It was really different to see that much flat land in one place. Additionally, much of the land was being used as rice paddies. In a lot of the places we drove through these couple days, it was interesting to see how interspersed the rice paddies were with residential and commercial areas.

After grabbing a little bite to eat, we went to one of the many hot spring businesses. The one we went to that night didn't have natural hot springs, but it was still really cool. Imagine a public pool, but instead of one big one, there were a bunch of small nicely decorated ones. There were a blue one and a purple one, which had certain minerals in them. There were hot springs with water jets. They had a really hot one and a really cold one (I think 7 C) which you could only stay in for any amount of time if you barely moved at all. Also, that had a lukewarm one in which little fish bite off your dead skin. It was a really weird feeling, and I couldn't stay in there for more than half a minute. Also, they had a warm pool with a waterslide going into it. We went down plenty of times; I felt like I was a kid again.

After the hot springs, we went to check into the hotel in nearby Luodong. The hotel was a little hard to find at night. It just looked like a nice three story house, in the middle of a bunch of rice paddies. After checking in, we went to the Luodong night market to grab some food. Part of the night market surrounded a park, and, since it was still the week of Chinese New Year, people were setting off fireworks every five minutes. At the first place we stopped, I ordered some shrimp and egg fried rice, and had some of the oyster omelet Ray and Anna had ordered. At the next place, we got some sweet shredded chicken on rice. At the last place we stopped, Anna shared some of what she ordered. The dish had milk, chunks of tofu, white sesame seeds, and chunks of tapioca with black sesame seeds in the middle. It was sweet, and the Taiwanese eat it as desert, but it seemed more like something I would eat for breakfast. Walking around, it was neat to see all the red lanterns they had hanging around the park for the new year. After that, we headed back to the hotel to crash.

The next morning, I left the hotel a little early to walk back to the city so I could get some breakfast and walk around. The night market area was mostly up and running at 11 in the morning. But I stopped at a sandwich/burger place and got what I usually eat near the hostel - a hamburger (which is like half sausage patty, half burger) and egg sandwich, and a slice of turnip cake. After walking around, I sat down for a while to wait for Ray and Anna to come by and pick me up. While I was waiting, a couple of Taiwanese girls said 'Hi' and I responded in Chinese. We talked for a little bit, and they were surprised that I could speak Chinese so well. They asked if it was alright to get a picture with me, and I obliged. After Ray and Anna picked me up, we were off to Sanxing.

Near Sanxing, they have a natural hotspring that people go to and use nets to cook things, such as eggs and corn. We brought some eggs and a net, and away we cooked. I couldn't believe how crowded it was; it was a bit hard to get a spot. There were a bunch of tents around the hot spring selling meals, drinks, chicken eggs, corn, and flavored (salty) goose eggs. A few people set up camp around the area. In addition to the area with the really hot water, a little down stream there were a few pools with people wading and sitting around, soaking there feet and legs. It was a good time. Before we returned to Taipei, we stopped at a Sanxing restaurant for some kind of breaded fried meat on top of what looked (and tasted) like funnel cake made from vegetables. All in all, it was a fun couple days.

Chinese New Year

I had off of school last week for Chinese (lunar) New Year. It is, of course, a much bigger deal than the Western New Year. In Taiwan, this is the time when almost everybody has a week off of work, when they return to their hometown or similar place, mostly in the south, to spend time with their families, almost like Christmas in America, but I don't recall ever getting a week's vacation. I'm sure some people give family members presents for this holiday, but the main gift is 紅包 (hong bao), red envelopes, usually filled with money, given (generally, I think) to youth by adults. The saying they use is 恭喜發財，紅包拿來 (gongxi facai, hongbao nalai), which roughly means "Congratulations, make a fortune. Give me a red envelope." After saying Happy New Year in Chinese, a lot of people also add the 'gongxi facai', too. I guess health and happiness are not as good as wealth...For the first few days after Chinese New Year, the city was relatively deserted (though I hear not as much as in the previous years), and the vast majority of stores and restaurants were closed, so I ended up going to 7-11 (which is absolutely ubiquitous here) more than I'd prefer to get meals.

Jason made a comment about joss, which I had never heard of. Then I looked online and discovered that I had seen joss paper plenty of times. It's also called spirit money, ghost money, and probably other names. A lot of times (certain days more than others, a friend told me every 13 days, but I haven't confirmed this) while walking on the sidewalk, I'll see a few places on every block, in front of businesses, where people will have a cylindrical metal container with airholes on the sides with a fire going inside, and people will be throwing pieces of paper (spirit money) in there. I believe they are doing this so that their ancestors may have a better afterlife. A lot of times, people will also set up tables next to these which have fruit, incense, and other things on them. I've even seen a roast duck one time!

Over the Chinese New Year, these were especially common, especially starting a few days after the actual new year, when people started coming back from the south. There was no big show of fireworks for this new year, but there were several small ones, in Taipei and in Luodong, which I'll talk about in my next entry. For at least a week after Chinese New Year, people everywhere were setting off long strings of firecrackers, louder than ones in the U.S., and each string lasted anywhere from 10 to 30 seconds. I think they do this to ward of ghosts, who are supposedly scared by the noise.

It was nice to have a week off of school. The whole time I was cat-sitting for Jered, who went to Japan with his fiance. I did however make it over to Yilan, on the east coast of Taiwan, with a couple friends last Thursday and Friday, and I'll tell you all about it in my next entry.