Firecrackers and Back to School

Empty car on the Taipei MRT (subway), as half of Taipei heads south for the New Year.


My Aunt and Great Aunt "Jimbo" riding the subway on New Year's Day.


High speed rail station in Tainan


My 3-year-old nephew. You can't see the Hello Kitty balloon he is holding, where HK is riding on a dolphin. Cute!!!

Hope you've all enjoyed your week off! Here's what happened this past week:

New Year's Eve (February 6th) is like Christmas Eve, where everyone comes together to enjoy a feast with the family. Dad and I celebrated at the house of my Aunt and Great Aunt "Jimbo", and we had a great time eating and talking.


At the stroke of midnight on New Year's day, hordes of people elbow each other at the temple in hopes of offering the first stick of incense, which is said to bring properity to the offerer. In the morning, hordes of people line up outside the major department stores waiting for a chance to win a prize in their New Year's Day raffle. People started lining up the evening before, but alas the scale of the prize did not correspond with their wait times - one person who waited 19 hours got a box of fruit, while another who waited a mere 12 hours won a shiny new car. Then there are the hordes of people (like myself, Aunt, and Great Aunt) who go to temple, praying and thinking good thoughts, and getting our umbrellas stolen...haha.

Then I high speed railed it to Tainan to spend a few days with my Aunt (my Mom's older sister) and her family. I saw a few family members for the first time, including my Uncle's teenage daughter, and my Aunt's precocious 3-year-old grandson, who loved pushing people's buttons and has the most adorable laugh whenever something breaks, crashes, or explodes. He also has the appetite of a kid twice his age! I also got to get to know my two little nieces and nephew, my cousin's children, teach them a bit of English, and listen to the little one correct me as I stammer my way through a children's storybook in Chinese.

Tainan is south of Taipei, approximately 4 hours by car and 1.75 hours by high speed rail. The rail line runs from Taipei to Kaoshiung in the south, which would normally take 6 hours by car, or roughly the same distance from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The system was designed by Japanese engineers, and sources say that even the Japanese were impressed at the smoothness of the ride. A good part of the rail line is elevated, and some parts in Taipei are tunneled. The rail stations are super modern, slick, and so clean that even the trash cans shine! The station in Taipei is particularly efficient as it is housed in the same station as the subway (or MRT), regular speed trains, and bus depot, and is right smack in the center of town. You can book your ticket online and pick it up at the station, and there's even a guy in an orange vest all ready to help you if you're a dork like me and had trouble working the machine eventhough the instructions were in English. It doesn't get any better, and as an urban planner, it nearly brought me to tears.

As I was walking to class this morning, I came across ear-bustingly loud firecrackers going off in front of store after store, leaving bits of red paper scattered like confetti. Staff from nearby businesses gathered around a pot of fire on the sidewalk, burning "gold paper" in hopes of greater prosperity for the coming year. This signals the end of the New Year holidays, and it's back to school for me!