I've just come back from my first study abroad excursion in Asia to Taipei, and finished celebrating Chinese New Year!
Chinese New Year Celebration:
The amount of effort and happiness involved in celebrating Chinese New Year definitely is a reflection of the fact that CNY is their most celebrated holiday. This year, CNY was on Monday Jan. 26 , and celebrations for the holiday go on for about a week plus or minus days depending on what nation; for example, Taiwan gets 9 days off for CNY. Also, this year is the year of the Ox, so everywhere you will see very cute ox CNY decorations, upside down "fu", and typical hopeful Chinese sayings written on red paper.
One of the first ways that I got to start off celebrating CNY was to go to Hong Kong Disneyland and celebrate it with my favoriate characters! If you don't already know, I LOVE Disney. I even have a Disney monopoly, monopoly being another game i love. While HK Disneyland compared to Disneyworld in Orlando is puny, I found the size of the park just right; not so extensive that I couldn't finish everything in one day, and not too small that I would get bored. We spent about 8 hours in the park in perfect weather getting to see Mickey, Minnie, and Goofy all in traditional Chinese garb!!! it was THE most adorable thing i've seen in my life. Granted some of the rides were pretty childish, we all knew that going into it, so we definitely appreciated tapping into our childhood memories. My friends and I decided that when we first got to the park, we'd all buy ridiculous and cute disney headgear and wear it all day in the spirit of good old fashion fun! One of the cooler things we did was actually going on "It's a small world" ride because it had always been one of my favorite rides as a kid when I went to Disneyland with my family friends. Now when i went on the ride, I was able to recognize what nationality most of the dolls were from (particularly the European ones). We also got to watch the Lion King live, Disney's philharmagic, ride on a jungle cruise, and watch a Chinese New Year parade. But I will say that the highlight of the HK Disneyland was the fireworks show, it was AMAZING. I'm not sure what it is about Disney, but it just makes me so happy and its truly magical! I tried posting the video clip, but it didn't work. it is under videos that tag me, so watch it!
(and yes that is minnie dressed up as an ox for CNY!!)
I also went to the Chinese New Year Market in Hong Kong and it was packkedd, kinda like a busy night at the night market in Taiwan. It was bizarre because they would sell the most random things, like turd stuffed animals, and really giant plastic ferrer rocher toys. One of the CUHKers said that they pretty much sell whatever they can get cheapest from Chinese factories. In fact, Junes, one of my GLOBE cuhkers friends, said that they had a booth last year at the CNY market, for which they bought the most useless stuffed coin holder thing for about 23 HKD a piece and sold it for 88HKD a piece. They would put out 10, and say that it was the last 10 left, and then put out another 10 after those 10 were sold! The CNY market this year was also selling what Junes had been selling last year and sold it for 80 HKD. That just goes to show to never feel guilty for bargaining because they are always earning a profit, and if they weren't they wouldn't sell it to you for the price you are trying to bargain down to. Also one of the cooler things at the CNY market is the flower market section which just has stalls and stalls of flowers for the new year.
The last major thing that I did for Chinese New Year was to go to the CNY parade, which was sort of a let down. I had been hearing mixed reviews from different people. But what it came down to was that the flow was "lumpy" in that the parade wasn't continuous, and that they just didn't have the budget this year (from what i've heard). there were some cool floats, the best one being the disney one of course! However, all in all I was glad that I went because even though the parade itself wasn't great it was really cool seeing many of the local families bring their kids and to see them get so excited about the parade. The parade was on a Monday, and the fireworks on the tuesday, which we missed the fireworks becauseeee.... we were in TAIWAN!!!
Taiwan:
So this trip to Taiwan was really a chance for me to bring back some of my friends to a place that I love and have really only experienced with my family and/or an organization that planned everything for me. So even though everything that I saw or went to was primarily something that I had already done, it was really good to do it with friends, and I feel that i know my way around Taipei alot more and can self navigate, which I never had to do before.
We stayed at the Caesar's Park hotel, which was a 4-star hotel. It was SOOO nice and really cheap because we did everything through a travel agent. I will say that for our airtickets to Taiwan during the CNY holiday,and 3 nights at a NICE hotel, I paid the same price as a 3 night stay in a european hostel and cheap airtickets in Europe. The hotel was located right across from the Taipei main station, so it was always a quick ride to any location we wanted to go to.
The first night we went to the Shilin Yeshi (night market), which was SOO packed. But everyone really enjoyed the food market, the O-ar-jian (oyster gooey thing), sesame noodles, baozi, and all the other cheap food. Everything was about $1 a piece. they did NOT however enjoy the stinky tofu heheh, which is more of an acquired tasted anyways. My friends and I especially enjoyed the cheaper prices and better selections at the night markets in Taiwan than the night markets in Hong Kong. After the night market we all went back to the hotel for a good nights rest, on a nice spacious bed and clean bathroom.
The next two days, we really packed it in with all sorts of things, but it was very relaxed at the same time. We ate at Din Tai Fong (famous place to get xiao long bao), then went to the top of Taipei 101, where i got to see the city on a bright day (unlike the last time i went), and then we had an unsuccessful attempt at finding a teahouse. Later that day, we split up, because that was expected since our group was so big, and my friends Simone, and Svenja, and I decided to go to a 24 hour bookstore, and wine bar for a relaxing evening since we were all so tired of walking during the day. BTW, the 24 hour bookstore was listed under the nightlife section for Taipei, and it really is packed with people at late hours.
We also went to the National Palace Museum, which was very crowded but very interesting. Just a bit of history, at the end of the civil war between the Communist and Nationalists in China in the mid 1940s, Chiang-Kai Shek fled to Taiwan, taking with him about half of the most precious Chinese artifacts and antiques that had once been part of the Imperial collection in the Forbidden City. We got to see real furniture from the last Chinese Dynasty beautiful ornate jewelry! Strangely enough, one of the most prized antiques is a jade "bai cai" (or white vegetable/romaine lettuce), which one of my friends pointed out the connection that the most prized possession is a representation of food, asTaiwan is known for its food!
After a long morning at the museume, we went to a hotspring resort in Beitou, which is on the outskirts of Taipei. It was probably one of the best value experiences i've had in Taiwan. for an hour in the hotspring (which is enough considering how hot it was), and for afternoon tea, which included quality tea, delicious salad, and quesadillas, we paid about 20 american. Not to mention that the service and the hotspring itself was top notch. Also, the hotspring was a nude one, which apparently all quality hotsprings are. The nude part was a surprise for us because none of the guidebooks said it was, but it was just us girls so it was all fine! After that we ate dinner at a japanese restaurant and then went shopping at Ximending which is so lively at night. We called it a night after that, and again went back to our nice, cheap, and luxurious hotel.
(the first 3 pictures are from the hotspring, and the last one is of Ximengding)
On the last day, Friday, our flight was at 7:30 pm so we were able to do a lot of cool stuff before then. We went to the Bao An Temple as well as the Confucious temple, which was really cool for me to see because I'm currently studying Confucious philosophy in my Chinese Philosophy class. Compared to the Bao An Temple, the Confucious temple was so quiet and peaceful, and really the only way I could imagine a Confucious temple. I also met the nicest old lady who volunteers there! After that, we all went back to Ximending to shop more. Everyone ended up splitting off again, and my friend Linea and I found a really cheap clothing shop. we also came upon a small sorta sketchy chua bing (shaved ice) place and had some REALLY good passion fruit chua bing. after that we all met back up at the hotel and headed back to HK.
Overall the trip was awesome, and the reason why I haven't mentioned a highlight of the trip is because most of everything that we did was so good that there wasn't a single highlight! Jamie and I put in a lot of effort to planning out what to do in Taiwan because it was more like we were hosting them rather than just a "discover the city on your own" trip. everyone was so happy and appreciative about the trip, that it made all the planning worth it :)
so that's what i've been doing for the past week. just some lasting thoughts...study abroad this semester is VERY different from last! its actually quite interesting and a challenge to try to accept this experience for what it is and try and not compare it to last semester.
but this post has been entirely too long....soo until next time!
~Jenny
