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.