Chinese New Year

This is a busy time in Taiwan, Sunday January 10th is the Chinese New Year(CNY). It is a time when children have no school for almost 2 weeks and most workers have the entire week after CNY off. Lots of family gatherings, dinners, parties, ... it's like Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving and the 4th of July all wrapped up in one week. But mostly, I think, it's about strengthening the ties between family members, old to young. So there are gifts given to the younger generation from the older. And the customs of Chinese culture are handed down from the older generations to the younger.

Usually the gifts are the famous "red envelopes" that contain money. (As far as gifts go, money is always the correct color!) But there are other gift giving, this is a Banyan tree near the GuangHua Electronics Shopping District. LED strings are shaped in the form of possible electronic gifts.

Chinese New Year is actually the beginning of Spring by the reckoning of the Chinese Lunar calendar. This year in Taiwan has been unusually warm. The cherries, magnolias and azaleas are in bloom.

 Another tradition of CNY is to put up Chun Lian as I have written about before:

http://mikeess-trip.blogspot.tw/2011/02/chun-lian-spring-couplets.html

But this year I went down to the old WanHua neighborhood of Taipei to have a professional write my Chun Lian. I had to struggle with this old guy because my couplets for ChunLian were not "beautiful". That's true, I told him, my couplets were political and because I was paying for it he had to do it my way.

My couplets are as I explained in the previous blog entry, but now they were written by an artist.

While in the WanHua district I heard an amazing performance, someone playing a saw under tension with a violin bow. Wow, she was great, it sounded like a theremin.

While at ZhongShan Hall, they also had a collection of the traditional Chinese instruments.

 Ruan - the Chinese Guitar, 4 strings

 Guzheng - a zither, 16-25 strings with movable frets

Guqin - a zither, 7 strings