My school gave all of the students, teachers and admin staff 7 days off for the Lunar New Year, aka Chinese New Year. According to Wikipedia, “Chinese” New Year is also celebrated by “Koreans, Tibetans, Bhutanese, Mongolians and Vietnamese“. The first time I realized that was when a Vietnamese friend got annoyed (and rightly so) with me for “owning” a celebration that was hers too.
The streets have been really quiet in Taoyuan. The majority of the shops on my street are closed and the few that are open are making money hand over fist. Most people have left Taoyuan for their hometowns scattered across Taiwan. As a result, my normally noisy apartment building is almost deathly quiet. Good thing I have my little guys to keep me company.
That last line sounded like a good exit line…but wait, there is more. While my little guys are very cool, they can’t talk. Luckily for me, a few friends are staying in Taoyuan/Taipei and they have invited me over to witness celebrations in keeping with Taiwanese/Han Chinese tradition.
Two days ago, I went to my coworker A’s house to have dinner with her family and several other lucky foreign teachers. We had seafood hot pot, cake, wine and great conversations.
Today, I went to a friend’s house to meet his grandchildren and say hello to his 92 year old mother. That’s right, there were 4 generations under the same roof, all there to celebrate family, food and to bring in the new year.
Tomorrow, I will be heading into Taipei to have lunch with a friend of my mother’s. I expect that her children and grandchildren will also be there and we’ll all have a blast.
mwhitney said
I am unclear on why people find “Lunar New Year” more acceptable. Besides being inaccurate, it seems like an even less reasonable claim given the other lunisolar calendars and even genuine lunar calendars that place the new year at a different time.