Chinese New Years - continued

The Chinese New Year(CNY) marks the beginning of the lunar calendar. Because is starts on a full moon, it can happen any day within 28 days compared to the Western calendar. February 10th(this year's CNY) seems particularly late.

School children get maybe 2 weeks off and businesses a full week. Most people use this time to connect with relatives. Taiwan is a small island and because everyone is traveling in the same vacation period there are plenty of traffic jams and long waits for buses, trains, ... I hear that in mainland China, the traveling is even worse as the distances are longer and many young people have moved to the city but then for CNY must travel to the countryside.

For Florence's family, the Lee family, most relatives are in either Taipei or the ancestral home of Ilan on the eastern coast of Taiwan. Two of Florence's uncles still live in Taipei and two of Florence's nephews have had girls. So gatherings in Taipei have four generations of relatives. Here are the 2 newest Lee family members.

The CNY gatherings combine the best of Taiwanese culture: eating and talking. Taking a cue from the Harley Davidson Crew, the questions is: "Live to eat or eat to live?. The first day of CNY is spent with your family and the second day is spent with your in-laws. Either way, the food will be impressive. I know of some well-prepared attendees who start dieting 2 weeks before the feasts so that they will have no reason to hold back.

When I go to these gatherings, I expect an army to arrive soon to help us eat all this food. To counter these dinners there are outings planned to get some exercise. There are plenty of beautiful places within Taipei city limits to visit.

The cherry trees are blossoming early in Taiwan this year.

For the Taipei Lees going out to Ilan is a special treat, all of us have good memories about Ilan and the Ilan relatives always treat us well. Going to Ilan is like taking a step back in time compared to Taipei, the people are friendlier and time moves slower. 

Nowadays with the XueShan Tunnel travel to Ilan is much easier than before. Coming out of the 8 mile tunnel is always exciting and this year the weather was particularly sunny and we could see GuiShan Island(Turtle Mountain) in the

distance, it is an island off the coast of Ilan.

Everything seems to grow well in Ilan and some things are different from Taipei.

We had a big discussion whether this was a begonia or not, anyway it was pretty.

We made it out to Ilan on Wednesday, already 4 days into the CNY, for these gatherings, the dinners are usually at restaurants and reservations have to be negotiated a good week before. We went to a restaurant with a old Taiwan motif with interesting nostalgic displays like this collection of old cigarette packs.

I was a little surprised by this "vintage bicycle" from 60 years ago,  because I know in Taipei(and probably Ilan) many of them are still in service.

This time, rather than going hiking with the old people, I rode a scooter with the young people to a shrimp fishing pavilion. These are big farm fishing pools with a picnic atmosphere because you are going to eat what you catch.

I caught more than I ate, but I was definitely not the best fisherman(shrimperman). There were two ponds, in one you loaded the hook and tempted the shrimp to stay attached long enough to land them. In the other pool, you used a very small hook with a bit of bait and tried to get the shrimp to actually swallow the hook. The second pool produced the bigger shrimp.

And here are the results:

When you see the shrimp flopping on the barbie, you know it doesn't get any fresher than this.

CNY always a good time.