Yin's in Taiwan

Friday, February 13, 2009

Lantern Festival

So as you know if was Chinese New Years. New Years last 15 days, and at the end you celebrate it with the Lantern Festival. The 15th day of the new moon is the first night that you can see a full moon. There are quite a few variations as to why people celebrate. It sums up to.............you guessed it good luck and fortune. They have lantern contests with decorative lanters... below you can see a few examples. Some are small, some are large, but all are amazing. All the creations are made with the rice paper that you see adorning traditional lanterns.

So in addtional to all the lantern float thingies, there was also other things to see. Notice the images on the building surrounding the float type thingies... they did this with lights...

We also wrote down our wishes for the New Year and hung them from lights.

The next night we took a trip up to "shen me, shen me, shen me" (pronounced shu mu)....that's Chinese for something something something... Couldn't pronounce the name of the place we went, therefor can't remember the name of the place we went. Anyway, we of course had to take a picture of the moon since it is the Lunar New Year. It was amazing and huge, especially since we were up in the mountains.

This is the town we were in. I took a picture standing in the middle of it.

A train runs directly down the center of it. Here is a picture of some people setting their lantern off. They are really large and you're suppose to write your wishes and hopes and basically just good thoughts on them. Some say they carry your prayers to the Gods. So along those lines, the higher they go the better your luck will be for the new year.

And here we are setting our own lantern off. It went very high and very far. Our lantern wasn't quite as decorative as everyone else's but it suited our purpose. The kids said they want to do that every year. It was quite the experience.

Like I said we had to travel to the mountains to do this.... how you ask... by my favorite mode of transport.... bus!! We didn't want to wait in line for over an hour to get a seat on the bus, so we oppted for standing for the bus ride. We figured stand for an hour to get a seat, or just stand for an hour on the bus and try to stay upright. It wasn't too bad, and on the way back, the kids got to sit on the stairs... which is a good thing, because they were very tired.

Notice Ashton's leaning against the panel... he looks awake, because he's still holding on, huh?

He was dead to the world. He feel asleep like this about five minutes into the ride.

And here is a video of them setting off a bunch of lanterns at once... and yes for those of you who are asking..."don't they come down", yes, yes, they do. Some don't make it up very far because they catch on fire (that has to mean bad luck... seriously, wouldn't that be like an omen), anyway after the fire burns down, they do come down and the mountainside is littered with lanterns. But this town is used to it and they do it year round, not just on New Years.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Play Date

新年快樂!!(Xin Nian Kuai Le!!)

Happy New Years!! It's the Lunar New Year or more commonly known as Chinese New Years. For New Years there's lots of fireworks, not just New Years Eve, or New Years day, but whenever... it could be at noon or 7:00 pm or ten o'clock at night or 3:00 am, or 4:00 am, or 5:00 am. And this last for 15 days. John said this is nothing compared to being in Shanghai during New Years! He says Taipei is pretty tame.

For New Years you give children red envelopes with money in them. The kids were way excited and of course the next question was "When can we go shopping?" So we went up to Keelung again, but this time no mountain climbing. We went to a toy store John found that sales (coughs) not so legit Wii games and bought like 13. They were only $5 (US) a piece instead of the normal $40-$60ish. So the kids, all four of them, bought their toys and then we went and ate and ate and ate. There's a huge night/day market there with excellent food. Especially this stand that sales noodles. They are very yummy!!!!

We get home and the kids, and by that I mean John, gets their toys out to play. But only like 5 of the games will work. Now when we got here John found a person who knew a person who could open the Wii up so we could play games that you could buy here. (All Wii's are region coded and will only play games from the magical land you bought them in.) So he had the pixy sprinkle his magical dust on it and it was suppose to magically let us play any game. John had all this done prior to our trip to Keelung, so the games were suppose to have worked, but alas poor Pinnochio was still only a wooden puppet and not a real boy. So the next day we go back to Keelung again. More toys, more food, and definately more noodles (same stand), but John has to leave the Wii so the little elves can look at it.

The next day we go to....Danshui. It's a city on the West coast. They have a place by the wharf where you can shop, eat and play games. We ate ice cream, extremely large ice cream and we shopped and walked around.

You can buy fresh fish...

Extremely fresh fish.... notice the boat behind the stand.

We listened to music played on an instrument I can't repeat the name of let alone spell it.

We then drove up around the top of the island along the coast to... you guessed it Keelung. But along the way we stopped at a couple towns and shopped and ate. Seeing a pattern are you? Well the wee folk actually fixed the Wii, so we take it and go home, but not before we go and eat more noodles!!! These people must think we're are totally nuts!!

We didn't just play games, shop and eat during the holiday, well mostly, but not entirely. We also went and rode bicycles along the river. It's really rather scenic. I don't know exactly how far along the river it stretches, but there's basketball courts, baseball field, fountains, running and biking trail, lots of things. In fact they have dragon boat races on the river itself. Hopefully we will be able to see that. We rented bikes and had a great time.

Here's John teaching Ashton how to ride a two wheeler.

And here's Ashton riding all by himself.

Could it be any more scenic!!! And in the picture above there were wild flowers with butterflies running along the path. It was incredible!! Straight out of a fairy tale.