If you didn't know, Chinese (Lunar) New Year is NUTS!!!
It's this weird paradox, most stuff is shut down for a week (or more) while people are on holiday, yet there's this frenzied preparation that cumulates in this annual celebration. I was in Taipei from 1/31 until 2/7, right in the mix of things. It was so much fun to observe and partake in this tradition... ABCs have a totally diluted version what goes down in the R.O.C. (or P.R.C. for that matter... wouldn't be surprised if every 1 out 8 children get their fingers blown off by firecrackers in the month of February).
My dad and I checked out this alley in Wanhua District (萬華) that specialized in selling all things Chinese New Year-y. We went the CNY Eve, so things had calmed down significantly by then, but supposedly it was packed like the 6 Train Subway at 8:30am for days straight! Elbows out.
I was nearly blinded walking through this all this prismatic candy wrappers. I was even almost convinced that these candy MUST be delicious because they were so gosh darn pretty. I bet they taste like chalk though, haha. (Sour grapes?)
There were rows of shops selling XXXXXL bags of nuts, seeds, candy. The bags were literally 2 meters high. I guess people like to fill their homes with a whole array of snacks during the holidays. This vendor was doing particularly well... I wonder why. :)
My birthday falls on Chinese New Year, and coincidentally my cousin Sunny's birthday is the day after CNY too. We celebrated together with a Qiao Hu (巧虎) cartoon character cake. Animal cakes are NEVER faux pas! Oh and if you didn't figure it out, I turned 27. :(
Me and my dad. :)
After having dinner with our family, my dad and I went back to Wanhua District to visit Long Shan Temple (龍山寺, aka Dragon Mountain Temple). Many people go to the temple on the first day of the year to pray for a fresh start. Literally thousands. Also, supposedly the first incense lit on the new year will be the most potent? I don't know, Chinese believe in many strange things... but although I'm the natural skeptic, it was hard not to get swept up by the whole scene. I found myself feeling very moved by the collective hope and ended up making my own little prayer to the gods for some well-needed direction for the future too.
This is how it basically works -- each temple has about 8-10 "stations" for gods. There's a certain path that you're supposed to walk around the temple. When you reach a station, you make your prayer (holding the incense around head-level and bowing several times), and then throw it into the cauldron. The smoke from the incense symbolizes your prayer reaching up into the skies to the gods. There are gods for wealth (obviously!), for childbirth, for love, for test-taking (obviously!!!), for peace, etc. Around each station there are also tables where people place their offerings. On these offerings people also write down their thanks (if their prayers were answered) or their wishes. Quite interesting... nothing is more telling of societies' aspirations than a religious ceremony/structure!
This is called "ba-bui" in Taiwanese. Not sure what it is in Mandarin.
Now "ba-bui" is what I think the most fun part of going to temple! They're wooden (or lacquer) crescent shaped thingamabobs that come in a pair. You ask a question and then throw them on the floor. If both smooth sides or curved sides face up, that means "NO", if it's one up one down, then it means "YES".
In a temple you can get your fortune! Yes, it's like picking straws, except there's a certain way to go about doing this. First you take a pair of ba-bui and ask them a question about life or whatever. My question was, "Can I go get my fortune this year?". Hahhahaha I don't know, I thought that the ba-bui was the gatekeeper or something, but afterwards my dad told me that I did it wrong. Whatever! After getting like 5 "NO's" in a row, the ba-bui finally told me it was okay to get my fortune. So then you go to this canister where there's a whole big batch of sticks with numbers on the end. You pick a stick and match the number on a whole series of drawers nearby. Pull out the right drawer, take your fortune, and voila! Your fortune.
Now I was pretty nervous even though I tell people I don't believe in this silly mumbo-jumbo, but when it's the beginning of the year and you do all this voodoo stuff to get a fortune, I would have been pretty crushed if I got a fortune that told me to go SUCK IT. I pulled out a "13" out of the batch of sticks, thinking "Shit! That's why the ba-bui said NO NO NO NO NO!" but then my fortune ended up being a 上上 (literally "up up"), the best possible! Whew. Dodged a bullet, found a pot of gold. WOOT!
My takeaways?
When you get a bad fortune, it's just superstition and only dumb people believe in that crap anyway.
When you get an awesome fortune, woohoooo~!!! Do a jig.
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