The Lunar New Year, The Year of the Rooster, began on January 28, 2017. For the past nine days, people in Taiwan's city centers traveled to their hometown or countryside where they grew up to visit their parents, relatives, and childhood friends. The highways were crowded with traffic in bottlenecks at critical times when the focus changes from sons' families to daughters'; sons' going home first, to their wives' family homes later, if they are married. All children, working or studying, go home. Since I am an ex-pat married to a Taiwanese woman, I go where my wife goes. I spoke Mandarin when spoken to and I struggled to understand as the conversation shifted back and forth from Mandarin to Taiwanese dialect with my wife interpreting at certain junctures in the conversation
From the first crackling of fireworks before midnight until the last cracklings when businesses re-open, and again when the Emperor of Heaven has his birthday, there is a flurry of visits to temples known for their spiritual power. There are visits to famous temples, too, like Lu-Gang nearby Taichung. Families with children visit amusement parks and special events planned around the holidays.
Since all the roads and everywhere you go is so crowded, I prefer to stay home. Luckily, we live near my wife's hometown, and so most of her relatives live nearby. Most of her childhood friends from out-of-town return here to visit their family.
The evening of the first day of the Lunar New Year was spent at my wife's brother's condominium a few kilometers from ours in Beitun, Taichung. We brought with us two surprise dishes, fried rice and braised pork thigh, to add to the dinner prepared by her sister-in-law. They were surprise dishes because if we had told her we were bringing it, she would have prepared less food. Sister-in-law is notorious for her methodical cooking with small outcomes, but this year she surprised us with more! As a result, the family had leftovers for the second and even third New Year meals. Despite having eight people for dinner, six from their own household including their three children, two of which are teenage boys, the table is not augmented, lengthened, or otherwise adapted, nor is one-quarter of the surface space housing a rice-cooker, hot pot, and other items cleared to accommodate us all. Instead, a maximum of five seats are available; one rotated between sister-in-law and Father who leaves the table early, while the three children come to the table to fetch food into their rice bowl and return to the living room sofa a few steps away to watch a kung-fu or American action movie, returning to add more. My wife and I stay planted in seats until the last soup.
The second day of the Lunar New Year this year was special. My wife's father decided to go with his son to visit his eldest and third eldest brothers, two men who he had not seen in years despite their living a few minutes apart in the same traditional Taiwanese court-yard homes
they have lived in since his childhood. My wife and I were asked to join, and so we loaded into her brother's Volvo and drove up the Han River East Road towards the Tan-Zih Road and negotiated one lane paths through Han River low flood lands where Taiwan Sugar Company used to have plantations. Father-in-law's two brothers are "squatters" in their homes for the rest of their lives; their properties will be reclaimed one day. The sugarcane is gone but happy gardens remain in the rural setting in the shadow between the Sze-Chi
Hospital and Highway 74. First Brother's son and daughter-in-law were back home from Taipei. I was finally able to speak English to someone besides my wife as First Brother's son was quite fluent. He had given up his high-pressure salesman position since we met last year for a more relaxed duty at the company.
We bid farewell and got back in the car for a five minute ride back to the Tan-Zih road that bridged the Han River, the same bridge where, years ago, First Brother had fallen off on his motorcycle one night and was assumed a victim the next morning when he was found on the banks of the Han, only to find he was only in a stupor, but that's another story.
The Third Brother also hadn't been visited in years by my father-in-law who was shocked to see what physical condition he was in. It was known that Third Brother had suffered a stroke but it wasn't known that none of his five sons had set up care or rehabilitation therapy for him! As a result, his legs had become atrophic. Father was going to take action, call his Third Brother's sons, get to the bottom of their disregard, and insist a home attendant be acquired. Despite Third Brother's physical condition, his mind was quite clear and the two brothers conversed about his health. Father-in-law had himself suffered through a stroke and, through his own willpower, therapy, and the loving-kindness of his family, had recovered well. He urged Third Brother not to give up hope, this a 74 year old man talking to a 79 year-old.
The third day of the Lunar New Year is the day married daughters go home to their parents and so it was, that despite our unorthodox first night welcome because my family is all in the United States, my wife and I returned to brother's condo. This time, the dinner table was shared with my wife's "ah-go" aunt, my father-in-law's Sister, and her youngest son. Now ten of us vied for five lunchtime places at the table. The mood was dampened a bit by the knowledge that Sister's son, my wife's cousin who had introduced me to outreach assignments at Sheng Kang Publisher, was found to have three tumors around his neck; he would be getting them removed and having a biopsy soon. (NOTE: A few days ago doctors removed the tumors, one in his throat the size of a golf ball, and they are awaiting the results of the biopsy.)
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| The notorious six-smoke stack coal-fired power plant along "scenic" Route 61. |
After dinner it was announced that we would all be going down to Tainan the next morning to visit my wife's adopted aunt on her mother's side. Brother-in-law Shih-Dong went over the map route with me, a route along Taiwan's ugly Coastal Route 61 to avoid the certain traffic there'd be on Freeway 1 and 3. I was to drive in our Mazda3 with Leona as there'd be no room in his Volvo.When morning came, it was apparent that Father wouldn't be braving the holiday traffic and his three children wouldn't be going, either; only my wife's "ah-go" aunt would accompany us so we could all share Shih-Dong's car. The two and a half hour trip took four hours on the "short-cut"; we had left at 7:30 and arrived for lunch.
Leona's "gan-ai-yi" (adopted aunt) was like a sister to her mother who passed away when she was forty-nine. She had married a Taiwan Navy Seal diver, a Chinese who immigrated after the Civil War, leaving his old family behind. My wife has many fond memories of being with her gregarious aunt and her husband who secretly took them out on a motorboat from An-Ping Harbor when she was a child. Aunt always had fun things to do and gifts for her adopted nieces. The woman still has it; funny as heck! Her husband, however, has Alzheimer's and only occasionally recalls people and events. We were there over an hour after having an excellent seafood lunch before he commented realizing I was Caucasian American. No matter! We all had a laugh as Aunt told her stories and caught up with family events.
We stayed and chatted until three o'clock and then decided to enjoy the wonderful warm weather and head drive a few minutes away to An-Ping Street crowded with tourists for the holiday, but we had to head home, no easy task since many streets were closed to turns detoured because of the crowds. Driving on the "short-cut" Route 61, it took six hours to return to Taichung. Shih-Dong was tired and his driving was becoming dicey in all the traffic.
The Lunar New Year was coming to an end; businesses were re-opening, but schools were still closed mid-week. There was time for more visits, this time from Leona's childhood friend, Huang Wen-Ing, her husband Jin-Rong, and their four teenage daughters, Yu-Ting (Louise), Yu-Ching (Luby), Yu-Ya (Lulu), and Yu-Chien (Lucy). They came over to our condo to spend the afternoon. The girls loved picking up the spatula to make the crape with ice-cream I had showed them along with the vanilla ice-cream sodas. They had driven up from their home in Tainan and had spent the previous days with her family in Tan-Zih and his friends who lived nearby. Wen-Ing had been on a diet and lost some weight. She chatted with Leona as the girls played with Nala as their father sat on the sofa playing games on his smart phone.
When we though the holiday visits were all over, there was one more visit; Leona's sister, husband and two children from Tainan. Once a year, she comes up with her children and husband to visit my Father-In-Law who is very kind in giving red envelopes to the struggling parents, still in-debt from bad investments, and still on the run from debtors. Their visit began at our condo
because they arrived early by car and because Leona's "ai-yi" aunt (Mother's sister) had decided to pay a surprise visit to Leona's brother's family. It would have been a crash course if her aunt and her sister met as her sister still owes her a lot of money she borrowed and her aunt is still sore about it, so we kept the family here and took them out to a Hakka lunch until her aunt vacated the premises. After lunch we went to Shih-Dong's condo and pretended everything was normal. The children got red envelopes from us and their grandfather and uncle.
With the holidays over, I now return to normal days of my retirement; bike-riding, swimming, writing fiction and blogs, and studying Mandarin.
While everyone is back at work and school today, I ready to ride up the river. Tomorrow we will get two more guests at our condo, permanently, as Tanuki and Cookie Dough arrive at their final destination. Happy Lunar New Year to you all!
