Chinese New Year 2012 in Taiwan!

Happy year of the water dragon, dear readers!  Apologies for the delay in this post, but it has been a challenging week healthwise for both of us.  Since Chinese New Year, we've had about two colds/illnesses each, but seem to be recovering now.

This year was the first year that both Muir and I got to experience Chinese New Year (CNY) in China/Taiwan, and it was a fun experience, definitely one that I'll always remember.

This year, CNY Eve fell on Sunday, January 23rd.  Since CNY is calculated based on the lunar calendar it varies from year-to-year, sometimes by several weeks.  The People's Republic of China grants a week-long official public holiday in observance of CNY, and my co-workers began departing for their home cities the Tuesday and Wednesday before CNY.  Muir and I also observed an up-tick in subway and vehicular congestion as early as January 12th.  Travel gets both expensive and hectic because such a large part of Beijing's population is comprised of migrant workers from other parts of the country, and they all like to go home for the holiday.

We flew direct from Beijing to Taipei first thing in the morning on Thursday, January 19th.  The flight was only three hours, and my aunt and cousin picked us up at the airport.  My aunt lives in a cute northern suburb of Taipei called DanShui.  The first day we didn't do too much.  We had some lunch at an American restaurant called Swenson's, bought cereal and yogurt for breakfast at a nearby grocery store, unpacked and settled in, went out for Japanese for dinner, ate some buddah fruit back at Auntie's house and then went to bed.

Delicious and delicate seafood soup served in its own teapot!

Me and Auntie in the living room

Gloria, me, Muir

The next morning my cousin, Gloria, who was visiting from New Zealand where she works as a dentist agreed to take us out sightseeing.  We stopped at the DanShui mangrove preserve and ecology center and walked north along the river until we reached Old DanShui.

Mangrove seedling exhibit at the ecology center

Museums are fun!

Me and Gloria on the mangrove trail,
sleeping buddah mountain in the background

And on the other side, DanShui

The seed of a future mangrove tree,
called a "water pen seed" in Chinese

In Old DanShui we basically pigged-out on all the goodies being sold in hole-in-the-wall shops:  a real donut, sweet and savory pork sausage, the best fish ball soup I have ever had(!), a sticky milk curd dessert ball that you roll in ground peauts or coconut, and some traditional "candy" of dense pucks of ground and sweetened red beans or lotus root wrapped with flaky pastry dough.

Fish balls with a pork filling that tastes like the kind my mom
makes for dumplings

Best. Fish ball. Soup. Ever!

Street in Old Dan Shui

After gorging on delicious snacks, we rode the subway into downtown Taipei to visit a large bookstore because Muir wanted to buy a book written in traditional characters while we were in Taiwan.  He didn't find the book he was looking for, but he bought another by the same author.  After that, we had a dinner of Vietnamese pho and Taiwanese beer in the shopping mall basement and then headed home.

On Saturday morning, the four of us went shopping for fruit at a traditional open-air market and then had lunch at a Japanese fast food restaurant called Mos Burger.  In the afternoon Gloria took us to see Fort San Domingo in another part of DanShui.  One of the buildings on the grounds was the former office and resident of the British consulate on the island.  The linguist Herbert Allen Giles, co-creator of the Wade-Giles system of romanization of Chinese also lived there with his family for a while.  Sorry Herb, pinyin forever!  For dinner that night, Gloria cooked a lavish spread.  She must have made eight dishes!  Ridiculous.  She says she's even better at western food, as if I needed another reason to visit her in New Zealand!

Pork vendor on the right,
vegetable vendor on the left

Teriyaki burger + fried egg = Mos Burger!

Nom nom nom!

Former British consulate at Fort San Domingo

Ready, aim, fire!

Finally found a pair of shoes that fit!

Gloria sitting pretty

Fort Antonio at Fort San Domingo

Trying to crack the safe in Fort Antonio

A building on Alethia University's campus

Agei - a snack of mung bean noodles wrapped
in tofu with a spicy sauce

Sunday, New Year's Eve Day was a day of eating.  Auntie picked a seafood restaurant in Dan Shui where you pick the seafood you want to eat straight from the tank and then they prepare it to order.  Seafood that fresh is unbelievable!  After that late lunch, we had coffee at a nearby hotel.  In the evening, we drove into Taipei and had dinner at my Uncle Jing-Shyr's new apartment.  His wife had cooked at least a dozen dishes, which were also delicious.  Among the more unusual items we consumed, tripe and cow brains!  Both actually quite tasty.

The catch of the day

This place was legit!  The seafood was so fresh.

Me, Muir, Auntie, Gloria, Jerome's baby boy, my cousin Jerome, Jerome's wife

New Year's Eve Dinner

Auntie Hsiao Fann, Auntie Jie Wu, my cousin Yuemei

Grandma, Auntie Jie Wu, Yuemei, Uncle Jing-Shyr

Bei Bei, Jerome's wife, Jerome, Muir, me

Uncle Tien Li, Jerome's wife, Bei Bei, Jerome

Chinese fruit cake.
Made with rice, topped with dates, flavored with citrus peel,
and filled with red bean paste, of course!

Grandma, Jerome's wife, Yuemei, Gloria

A variety of buddha fruit that is super sweet and tastes slightly like pineapple

Monday, I felt under the weather, so it was a low key day.  We watched a few hours of the Australian open on TV in the evening.  On Tuesday, Auntie Hsiao Fann had made lunch reservations at a fancy pants Japanese restaurant in Taipei.  Gloria's friends Solomon and Ebony also visiting from New Zealand were invited along with Uncle Tien Li and his high school friend, Mr. Chen.  Uncle Tien Li had invited us to spend the night at his new condo south of Taipei and then take us to the airport the next morning.  Unfortunately, we didn't think to take any photos, but it was a super nice condo.  My favorite feature was the anti-fog mirrors in the bathrooms.

Wednesday we flew back to Beijing without any issues to a much emptier city.