新年快乐, dear readers! February 19 marked the beginning of the Chinese New Year (as well as other Asian nations’ lunar new year). This is the year of the sheep/goat/ram and it happens to be my year, so I should probably go out and buy some lucky red underwear (seriously, this is a thing in China/Taiwan).
I didn’t make any special plans this year–Taipei emptied out for the first few days of the holiday as everyone traveled back to their parents and other relatives. I didn’t see any of the chaos that I witnessed during Spring Festivals past in China. I kind of miss the days of baijiu and beer with a meal that took hours to finish followed by fireworks set off haphazardly by revelers too drunk to be trusted with explosives.
I managed to keep some traditions alive this year–I purchased a whole fish and frozen dumplings from Carrefour. The fish is important because the character 鱼 (yú) has the same pronunciation as 余 (yú), meaning “extra.”
After that I took a YouBike ride out to a wonderful bar called Beer & Cheese. It was a quiet evening at the bar with some really good beer from Evil Twin. I also had the friendliest taxi driver at the end of the night–he was quite happy to talk to a foreigner in Chinese and wished me a happy new year in English as I got into the cab. Somehow even with the New Year surcharge, the cab home was only a little more than the last time I came home from that bar.
In years past, I have eaten the animal for the zodiac year–for year of the rabbit the Sichuan restaurant in Jersey City served spicy rabbit head; they also had an array of eel dishes for year of the snake. But this year was different with a lack of lamb in Taipei. Had I been in mainland China, I would’ve sought out a Xinjiang restaurant for grilled lamb skewers or even a whole roasted lamb like I had for my going-away party years ago.
I wish my friends and family a healthy and prosperous year of the delicious sheep/goat/ram. Wait, that came out wrong. Maybe I need more baijiu and fireworks.
How did you celebrate the Lunar New Year? Did you eat plenty of lamb?
