My first Chinese NY in Taiwan

So, my wife and I are going back to Taipei from Tennessee for Chinese New Year. This is my first time spending Chinese N Y in Taiwan - ever.

What can I expect? Especially in monetary funds flying out the door… do we have to give red bags all over the place???

The most boring week of your life.

If you give, you shall receive… :smiley:

I always give 8,800NT to each of the inlaws. Kids get around 600NT depending on age. I have the feeling that I’m a little generous. Shuts everyone up, though, and I don’t get any grief when I spend all day sitting outside 7-11 drinking beer.

Chinese New Year in Taiwan is a special time when families get together and have conversations watch TV. People enjoy giving carefully selected gifts that they know the recipient will love cash in red envelopes. And watching TV.

Food plays an important part, also. The tables are set with grandma’s best lace tablecloth plastic sheeting, and the good silverware, china and crystal plastic cups, pink paper plates and disposable chopsticks are laid out on a candlelit table lit by the unsteady glare of a flickering fluorescent tube.

The roast turkey is taken out of the oven dishes of food are covered in saran wrap, nuked in the microwave, and left to cool on the table hours before dinner. Because this is CNY, while eating, people are on their best behaviour watching TV, grunting and reaching across the table to get desired morsels of food. Children under the age of 12 remember to say please and thank you are hand-fed by their over-indulgent mothers, and people take extra care to remember their table manners spit out chicken bones and shrimp shells into crystal bowls little paper boxes made of folded up junk mailers.

After dinner, the family sits in the living room and talks watches TV some more. At night, people like to go outside and go caroling, sharing the joy and beauty of the season light fireworks on the city streets, the noiser the better.

After that people go back home and watch more TV. :bow:

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Classic post! You guys get saran wrap? Your family must be very wealthy! We get a wee umbrella thing made of mosquito netting to cover the food with. Shrimp ARE much nicer two days old at room temperature, after all.

Classic post Duke. I am laughing so hard, I am crying. Haven’t done that in ages!!! And every bit of it is true.

Just remember the great food you ate on the first day, well you’ll eat it for another 3-4 days. This year I also get to go to Fengyuan for 4 fucking hours sitting in some god awful freezing place in my full Taiwan winter wear because nobody can be fucking intelligent enough to close a God damn door. I am not bitter. I’m hoping my kid gets the shits so we have an out. Is it acceptable to feed prune juice to a 1 year and 3.5 month old child for such reasons?

It was a great post Duke. :notworthy:

Duke - absolutely brilliant. If I ever meet you I shall buy you a large drink.

Make sure you copy it somewhere in case it gets lost when they restore to backup.

Taipei is no longer the shuttered wasteland it used to be over CNY back in the 90s. Sure many businesses close, but quite a few will remain open. No need to stock up.

Taxi drivers will demand (government standardized) holiday surcharges, and hair salons will charge double for a haircut.

Pure Clarse! :notworthy: Fat Tony “It’s funny cos it’s true”.

I second, third and fourth what everyone has said. That is one of the funniest things I have ever read. If this isn’t a classic post, I don’t know what is! :notworthy: :notworthy: :notworthy:

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My advice? Run for the hills!! And if you see them coming from the hills? RUN THE OTHER WAY!!

:roflmao: Yep, you nailed this one right on the head! :roflmao:

Duke; Brilliant! Absolutely BRILLIANT! JIECHU! :bravo:

My first year here, I had this crazy idea to do the northern east/west highway and take in Lishan on the way home. I had a 125 cc Kymko, tent, sleeping bag, cooker, etc.
Took off about noon the first day and enjoyed the leg going across the mountains to highway 7 in the Rift Valley. Found a good camp sight along the river and a wonderful natural hotspring with no people. Enjoyed a bottle of scotch while sitting and soaking until the weeeee hours.
It went downhill from there. I spent the next night in a hotel in Lishan with another bottle of scotch. Maid took my rain soaked gear and spun it as dry as she could and hung it under the car garage. It was still soaked the next day but it was all I had. Then, I discovered that the 1999 quake had wiped out the main road from Lishan and I had to go across “High Mountain Farms” to get back. SHIT! Cold! Rain! and snow part of the way. I only had a windbreaker brought from the States. Hell, I had heard this was in the “sub-tropics”
Was really sub sub sub tropics. Anyway, I ended up driving across the mountains on a dirt and dangerous road. I rode all day back to Hsinchu. Got home after midnight to a cold and dark apartment with no heat. Stayed unbder the hot shower for an hour just to warm up the old bones. CNY is ALWAYS cold and wet. Find a good friend to share a warm bed and alot of warm drinks. Hibernate for 10 days.

I think there’s a big misunderstanding between what the majority of Westerners expect CNY to be and the reality.
Its always seen as a big party time where everyone celebrates in the streets.
But actually its just a week off for the majority of people to have a rest and maybe a lunch or dinner with relatives at their home town.

Sure there are some activities around CNY but I think most people just use it to catch up sleep. :laughing:

Problem is even the GIO wants you to believe its more of a festival.
Luckily they acknowledge though: …the notion of getting together with the family will always lie at the heart of Lunar New Year celebrations.
Wish I could have get a biz trip abroad this time again, but I didn’t manage.

And it seems drunk driving is mandatory in CNY. Be careful out there.

Aww, Duke, you just made me so homesick! Classic post!

And thieves. Watch out for pickpockets, especially in Dihua Street and Ximenting, plus intercity bus stations. And burglars abound in the suburbs.