Weekly Mandarin 30

30th edition: Yuan Xiao

The festivities for the Lunar New Year end with the first full moon of the new year, which is called Lantern Festival, or Yuan Xiao.

Everyone at my school asked to make sure I was going to the nearby celebration of Lantern Festival-- they promised great food, good music, and huge fireworks displays. The Festival was the biggest I've gone to yet, and gave me some serious large-crowd-anxiety, but it was great! I had some delicious fried shrimp cake and the best fireworks show I've ever seen. The locals said it wasn't as good as other years, but all the Americans agreed that it was the best show we've ever seen.

Also, my personal highlight was writing on and floating a "sky lantern." These are large paper lanterns, which people write wishes on for the year. They then set a fire with ghost money at the base of the lantern (like a hot air balloon) and float them into the night. Here are some pictures from the evening.

Me and my shrimp cake. You can't see that both me and the shrimp (whole, still in its shell, and fried) are looking at you.

Getting ready to float the sky lantern (full chronology of the sky lantern life cycle to come).

...and a few of the fireworks, plus a lantern! These fireworks were HUGE. The small ones you see here are the size of normal US fireworks.

Weekly Mandarin: 29

29th edition: Bing Gan

(Slacking, I know. Sorry for the delay)

While I was home, I remembered how much I love to bake. Feeding people makes me happy. And it's just satisfying to turn a pile of ingredients into something tasty. So I baked a lot in Brian's glorious kitchen.

Unfortunately, back here in Taiwan, the apartments aren't built for cooking. There's a huge eating-out/take-out food culture here and not a ton of at-home cooking, especially among young-ish people who live in apartments rather than proper houses. So... I am making do with the toaster oven in the other apartment. I've resolved to bake weekly, the night before our weekly group meetings so I can feed people my creations and be sure I won't have to eat the aftermath of my baking alone. Mostly, I'll be baking bing gan (cookies!) since they're my favorite things to bake and they're easy to transport by scooter. Plus, I can make cookies from scratch, whereas I have a limited supply of hand-carried cake mix and frosting. But seriously, if you're thinking "I need to send that JennyWei girl a care package" send me some more things to bake:)

Weather

The weather here is miserable. It's cold (like 11 degrees Celsius indoors). And it rains a lot. And it's all about three times worse when you're scootering.

This cartoon made me think of the mental games we play with ourselves to believe the weather isn't so bad.

Some Folks Just Know How to Party

I have always loved fireworks, but I will absolutely never forget the fireworks here in Yilan. It's not that they're actually different kinds of fireworks, it's that they're set off by regular people, almost constantly, throughout the New Year celebration. Obviously, it's dangerous. But it seems so empowering to perform your own personal firework show. And it's incredibly beautiful to watch in the middle of the other twinkly lights in the city.

Starting off again

I knew, from the second that I was granted this Fulbright, that I would be coming back to the U.S. for a visit over Chinese New Year. I have so many people that I love at home that I knew I would have to visit. At the time, I didn't know I would also have a long list of things I would want to eat (pizza, bagels, gnocchi, Mexican food, and blueberries) and little daily experiences I would be desperate for (electric dryers, flushing toilet paper, indoor heating, and trashy TV) And United Airlines made it even more tempting to stay through some really miserable ground services.

But eventually, I landed in Taiwan again. I feel a little, tiny bit wiser about what I'm getting into. I'm also in a better position now to see how much Chinese I've learned, even if there is a lot more to learn. And I feel like I'm going to be making more of a push to cross off personal goals while I'm here for the second semester. I'm going to travel around Taiwan (and even to Japan!) and otherwise just try to do more for ME. So I'll keep you posted on that and I'll also continue my countdown to the end of my scholarship without shame...144 days and counting.

Weekly Mandarin: 28

28th edition: Chur

We will now resume our regular programming...

I came back from the U.S. a week before the end of vacation partly because I wanted to get adjusted to the time zones and food, and oh!, wait for my luggage to arrive, but also to enjoy the Lunar New Year as celebrated in Taiwan. The firecrackers have been constant and amazing, if occasionally a little too close for comfort. And the decorations around town are fun. But, like most holidays in the U.S., the main event is getting together with friends and family for the end-of-the-year feast.

So, this week's word is "chur", meaning "eat." And I ate a LOT at my co-teacher's family dinner. The dinner was hosted by the grandparents (who looked awesome for being near 90 years old) and cooked almost entirely by my co-teacher's mom. Here are some of the things I ate at the dinner...

• abalone, imported from Mexico
• veggies grown on the family farm
  
• breaded, possibly fried, shark
  
• chicken with the head sitting on the platter
• long-life vegetables
• and much, much more, some of which I probably don't want to know what it was.