This and all photos below are from the Xinyi District of Taipei

So it seems that the Chinese New Year festivities here in Taipei are over. I still have several days of "vacation" left, but the non-stop eating has ceased. I have already decided that I will never again spend another Lunar New Year in Asia.

A recap: it began on Sunday, when I traveled to a suburb of Taipei to have dinner at my Second Uncle's house. (That's how we call them; I don't really even know his full name ... he's my mother's brother.) It took over an hour to get to the place, and my Second Uncle's wife was there, as was my "Little Uncle" (my mother's youngest brother). We chatted for a bit, I looked at photos of my uncle's granddaughters (my nieces), and then we sat down to eat. Although I don't like Chinese food much in general, I definitely have my preferred "lesser of evils," and I can tell you right now that everything I ate during Chinese New Year OUTSIDE of the aunt's house I currently live in tasted heavenly. (Was that mean?) There was fish, hot pot, sticky rice, peas, shrimp, ginseng chicken soup, and at least another 4 or 5 dishes.

Dinner conversation devolved (or evolved, depending on how you look at it), as is the case whenever Little Uncle is around, into a discussion about politics, education in Taiwan, the real estate industry and environmental engineering. How I was even able to understand what they were talking about, I have no idea. Maybe my grasp of Mandarin is a lot better than I assumed it was. After 5 hours of eating and chatting and traveling, I finally arrived home and crashed. Only to wake up bright and early the next morning (Monday) to prepare to travel another 1.5 hours to another aunt's place for lunch.

Now I had no idea (because in the U.S., Chinese New Year is a one-day, one-meal affair), but there are customs attached to the first 3+ days of the Chinese New Year. On the eve of the actual day of the new year, you are supposed to have a massive family dinner to kick start the holiday, I guess. This is what I did on Sunday night, with my mother's side of the family (since my father is actually not Taiwanese at all, none of his family is here ... this will become important later on in my explanation of what goes on during Chinese New Year).

I think, traditionally, the first day of the New Year (Monday) is supposed to be dedicated not just to eating, but to religious aspects (here in Taiwan, mostly visiting temples and burning incense and offering fruits and food and the like) of the holiday. I have discovered, especially during Chinese New Year, just how superstitious the Taiwanese are. And here I thought I was superstitious when I had all these silly limitations on what I could and could not wear and when during high school so I could maximize my concentration levels before and during tests!

Miaoli County, as I've said before, is the strawberry capital of Taiwan. Strawberries were brought over to Taiwan in 1958. I read that Miaoli produces 90% of the strawberries in Taiwan. (Interestingly enough, there is a term called "Strawberry generation" here in Taiwan, which loosely translates to the American term "Millennials" or "Generation Y.") After our stop at the reservoir, we drove about 30 minutes to Dahu, another part of Miaoli County, to pick strawberries. We thought it would be a huge strawberry field, but the driver brought us to a small, family-run field (farm) by the side of the highway.

A little girl told us to put on a pair of rubber boots, and gave us these baskets with a cardboard box and scissors to snip the strawberries off their stems.

My teachers, classmates and I went on a field trip last Saturday, at the teacher's recommendation. She chose Wulai, which is a district known for its remedial hot springs, "thousand year old eggs" and aboriginal culture. According to its Wikipedia page, "The name of the town derives from the Atayal phrase qilux ulay meaning 'hot and poisonous'."

On the way up, we stopped at the reservoir from which Taipei draws its drinking water:

Happy 2012! I hope you had fun ringing in the new year and that 2012 has been treating you well so far. I ended up going with my friends to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall area (where it was less crowded) to watch the fireworks show from the Taipei 101 Building. The fireworks were beautiful, but I think for anyone to wait over 1.5 hours to see them is too much. The fireworks lasted, apparently, 202 seconds in total.

We walked over to the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall area from the restaurant we'd stalled for time at, in the Dunhua Street area. This area is crowded pretty much at any time of day, but on New Year's Eve, it was ridiculous. Living in New York City as many years as I have and working in the Times Square area for all of my working years, I don't think I've ever seen the mass of people I saw that night. (Of course, in New York City, I try very hard to avoid crowds.) The groups of people waiting for the crosswalk lights to change were about 15-20 rows deep! I've seen people 10 rows deep during the holidays in Times Square, but never more! We had no choice but to move slowly with the sea of people towards the Sun Yat-sen Memorial.