I lifted the following from Uncle Ken’s latest newsletter (him and Estelle have ‘retired’ in Malaysia).

We are now in the midst of Chinese New Year. Astrologers historically devised the lunar calendar near 300 B.C. during the rule of Emperor Yao for farmers to know when to plant crops and harvest them. Based on the phases of the moon, the Chinese New Year occurs between winter and spring. It is usually during mid-January to mid-February. Celebrated by Chinese around the world, the festivities are celebrated for 3 days by most city folk, but as a whole, is celebrated for 15 days. According to legends a monster threatening the Yellow River civilization disliked noise, light and the color red. The beast fled when lion dancers performed to the beat of drums and gongs, homes were lit brightly and many objects were painted red. Houses usually receive a spring cleaning and at least the front and back are painted. Debts are settled so as to prepare the beginning of the new year.

[...] The lion dance is usually performed in homes and business premises during Chinese New Year. As noted above, the origins of the lion dance are linked closely to the origins of the Chinese New Year celebrations. It is said that in ancient times, a mythological creature known as Nian terrorized China and devoured people on the eve of the new year. The only animal that managed to wound this beast was the lion. So, in an attempt to frighten the beast, the villagers decided to mimic the lion with lions made of cloth. The dance is believed to usher good fortune and ward off evil spirits.

The lion dance calls for perfect co-ordination, elegance and nerves of steel. Two dancers are needed to give life to a “lion” – one to control the movements of the head, eyes and mouth; the other to act as the body. The first dancer that controls the head determines the movements, while the second must work in tandem with him. This is not a simple task as the lion’s head, which is brilliantly adorned with feathers, fur and glitter, weighs from 20 to 35 pounds, a considerably heavy burden to hold aloft while moving vigorously. The head is constructed of paper mache and bamboo, complete with eyes that blink and a mouth that snaps.

[...]

It has been interesting taking our early morning and late afternoon walks around our neighborhood and witnessing all the special things going on. Offerings of candy, honey and sticky rice cake were made to the kitchen god so that he would say sweet things about the family in heaven. On New Year’s Eve, all family members, including those away from home, gathered for the annual reunion dinner. [...] It is the practice of elders and married couples to give children and the unmarried “ang pow” – little red packets containing money. [...]

There are lots of taboos and superstitions. Meals served on the first day are generally vegetarian as serving meat of slaughtered animals is considered bad luck. The use of knives and scissors would mean cutting off good luck, just as the use of brooms would mean sweeping away the good luck. White items are shunned as white denotes bereavement.

The second day the families gather to “open the new year.” This is usually the time in Malaysia where Chinese bosses will give bonuses out to all employees.

The third day is called the “Squabble Day” and is said that if one visits a friend on this day, one would quarrel or squabble with the person during this year.

According to tradition, the god of wealth, is welcomed into the household on the fifth day so as to ensure good fortune all year round. The seventh day is said to be the day that mankind was created and is deemed “everybody’s birthday.” The eighth and ninth days are devoted to the worship of the god of heaven and the jade emperor. Kuan Yin, the goddess of mercy, is also prayed to on these days and also the 15th day. The New Year celebrations culminate on the 15th day with shang yuan jie, the Taoist festival that honors the lords of heaven, earth and water.

Tonight, for only the second time in the entire time I have known him, I saw Joel cry. I’d love to tell you that it was because we had some big emotional bonding moment or something, but it wasn’t. Joel’s tears tonight were the product of another one of our culinary adventures. Since we don’t read Chinese, our method of finding dinner is to walk down a street and see what the vendors are selling from their carts…or, look in a restaurant window and see if they have pictures of the food with the prices next to them. Tonight we happened upon a little restaurant that had two pretty good looking dishes (one looked like chicken curry with rice, and the other looked like a beef noodle soup – but it had flames coming out of the bowl). We figured the flames were a good sign that either the soup would be spicy or the waiter would come out and set it on fire in front of us. Both options seemed fun, so we went in and ordered.

When the food arrived, I gave his soup a try. It tasted so good, but the longer it was on my tongue…the hotter my mouth got. So I stuck to the curry while Joel ate the soup. It wasn’t long before I noticed that he was sniffling a lot, and that beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. He kept saying, “Wow, this stuff is hot!” and pretty soon, he had tears rolling down his cheeks. I really did try not to laugh, but had to give up because it was funny to watch him eating, sniffling, crying, and saying how good it tasted. After we left the restaurant, he said that the spiciness of that soup was “Almost prohibitive.” That says a lot coming from Joel, who never backs away from any spicy food.

On a sweeter note, one stall we found had 6 inch diameter muffins! And at another sidewalk cart a guy was selling little egg custard hockey puck waffle things. We bought two hockey pucks at first and ate them as we were walking away. They were so good that we decided to turn around and buy a few more. I think we must have made the vendor’s night, showing up less than a minute after we left with half-eaten egg custards in hand and wanting to buy more.

An R.D.A. is when, like last night, we are on our own at dinner time to wander the streets and find something to eat. In a best-case scenario, you can actually see what your options are and thus pick something that at least looks like it might be tasty. In a not-as-good case, everything is underneath metal pot lids and the menu is entirely in traditional Mandarin. Normally there are little food stands everywhere, but during the holidays a lot of them close up shop so last night we were sort of at the mercy of whoever was still open.

The first two places were good – one had little fish-ball things covered in spices and sauces. The other had a hot black gooey (bean paste?) rectangle-on-a-stick covered in spicy sauce and rolled in crushed peanuts and cilantro. We were doing pretty good at this point – one or two more places like these and we’d be done for the evening.

But there was only one other place within three blocks of our apartment, and it was a not-as-good case scenario. Jessica decided to hold out in hopes of still finding something else, and I picked a menu option at random.

At first it looked like a cup of chopped up little egg roll pieces. About halfway through I took a closer look at those little tubes… hey, is that a blood vessel?

In Taipei today, a big bowl of intestine soup will cost you about $1.60.

In Taiwan, dogs don’t say, “Ruff Ruff!” they say, “Wang! Wang!” The year of the dog started at midnight today, so dogs barking, people saying, “Wang! Wang!” and an amazing amount of firecrackers all night long (are we under attack?!) were all part of the celebrations.

We had dinner last night with a family that is investing in Pacific Educational Institute: Charles and Angel, and Charles’ parents and brother. They were great hosts and we had a wonderful time. They knew some English but not much so it encouraged us to try with our little bits of Mandarin. We had a huge delicious dinner (in which we recognized almost nothing), learned how to toast with real strong wine (Baba – ‘grandpa’ – got a little tipsy for a bit!), and I learned how to play Mahjong (but not very well!). I also discreetly included the offering to the ancestors in the edge of one picture.

It’s interesting for us to be on the receiving end of the “taking care of the poor immigrants” routine. We’ve had foreigners in our house or church in Canada, where they had hardly any language and hardly understood the customs or holidays or traditions. It’s such a great blessing for us to have people take care of us like this, especially when they aren’t confident with their English and are having their holiday meal invaded by strangers.

See pictures from tonight here, and pictures from PEI’s first week of Winter Camp will be coming soon.

An immigrant family in Vancouver, B.C. once served my dad frozen canned orange juice mix in a dish with a spoon for dessert, not knowing that you’re supposed to mix that stuff in a pitcher of water and drink it. That’s sort of us right now (only we have it way easier than the average immigrant/refugee family).

It’s not easy to convey what it’s like to live somewhere where you don’t have a clue what’s really going on. We knew it would be this way without knowing Chinese so it’s not a surprise, but it is an interesting experience. In a big way, needing locals is a huge blessing. But without language (or even an alphabet!) you just can’t get a clue, at least not on your own. Two weeks in, it’s not the big, immediately obvious differences that are annoying… it’s the slowly rising collective impact of a billion tiny things making you dependent on everyone else.

…Like not being able to tell the difference between a package of Kleenex and a package of toilet paper, or if there even is a difference, and whether or not any of that matters when it comes to what you offer people on your dinner table. Not that it matters right at the moment, because when you picked out your furniture the table came without legs – not because the store messed up your order but because you didn’t know that you picked out a table top, that table legs are chosen separately, and that it was in black and white right in front of you on top of the table you chose.

Or, when the phone-looking-thing on the wall of your apartment by the door suddenly lights up around 9pm with a really obnoxious alarm. It’s loud, you can’t get it to stop, it can be heard in the hall, and you’re pretty sure it’s not a phone call because (a) you don’t have a phone line installed and (b) you already picked up the receiver and pressed all the buttons several times. You can say “our telephone” and “upstairs” in Chinese and you can do an entertaining impression of the noise it makes, and the security guard on duty (who can say “hi!” in English) is down four floors at the opposite end of the complex. But don’t worry – you’ll eventually be informed that the phone-thing is really just the carbon monoxide sensor and you should just crack open a window.

In Kenya and Uganda the languages are so phonetic we could at least sound everything out and ask about it. But here, it’s all traditional (unsimplified) characters that offer no hint for the uninitiated re: pronunciation. And what little Mandarin we did study before arriving was simplified Mainland characters. The majority of the things we see in grocery stores, at the sidewalk food stands, and in opaque packages are things we wouldn’t know about even if someone identified them in English. And even if we do know what something is, what do you do with 18+ inches of whole dried squid… grind it up? BBQ it? try and re-hydrate it?

This isn’t culture stress – not yet anyway. The new stuff, the not knowing, the learning, it’s still fun. Maybe in three months it won’t feel that way, but for now the annoying things are like a few mosquito bites on a summer camping trip – well worth the adventure.

We start a week of holidays for Chinese New Year in about 1.5 hours. That means that when we aren’t writing papers, we’ll be visiting families and key public places to be during New Years, exploring the streets in this neighbourhood (#1 in population density for Taiwan), and seeing what can be seen via Taipei’s great subway system.

These kids are all cute and everything, but it’s time for the da-bi-zi wai-guo-ren (big-nose foreigners) to run around!

In other news… a group of senior citizens were practicing tai-chi this morning – with swords - in the park across the street from our school. I would have run over and snuck a picture (as if a 6-foot-4 white guy can sneak anywhere on this island) but we had to start class… one of our students (the one Jessica tried to make go to the bathroom in English) was constantly saying, “Oh my got (God)!” A few times I ignored it, but he did it so much it got really annoying. We had a little lesson this morning on how to say, “Oh man!” and “Whoa duuude!” I’d like to see the ‘Brown Sugar American school’ down the street try and compete with that!

Okay, so this is kind of humiliating, but I thought I’d share it with you guys anyway. Yesterday afternoon, this 15 year old guy that is in our class came up to me and asked “Teacher, Can I go watch the Bachelor?” Now there was no way that I was letting him sneak off during class to go watch some dumb American TV show! What was he thinking? So, of course, I said no. Then, because I was curious about his question, I said “Is it in English?” He looked really confused. So I asked him where he would watch it, “Is it on your cell phone?” thinking he might have some kind of TV function on his phone that I hadn’t heard about. He looked even more confused, and pointed in the direction of the bathroom.

Then it hit me like a ton of bricks. He wasn’t asking to watch the Bachelor… he was asking to go to the bathroom.

Yikes! So, I tried to apologize, and to explain what I was thinking…but there is just NO way that he understood. So, I’m a mean teacher….so mean that I won’t let my kids go to the bathroom when they need to, and so mean that I ask them confusing questions about going to the bathroom after I’ve said no. He probably wondered what the heck was going on that I thought he would go to the bathroom in English, or on his cell phone.

Man, what a day…I was pretty embarassed! Lesson #1: If students ask a strange question, clarify to make sure you know what they are really asking. Lesson #2: Teach students proper English pronunciation for all words, but especially important words like “bathroom”.

We read chapter 2 of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe this morning – that’s the part where Lucy meets Mr. Tumnus and he feels guilty for kidnapping her, asks for her forgiveness, and then sneaks her to safety at great risk to his own life. We asked the students what they would have done if they were Lucy. Everyone said they would forgive Tumnus like Lucy did, except for the class clown who said he’d fight, but not before our stereotypically-cute-7-year-old-Asian-girl said, “I would kick him!”
 
 
 
 
 
 

Today was the first day of our winter camp program. It was a lot of fun…the kids have pretty varied levels of English, so we have to have a translator for some parts. Overall I think they enjoyed it. We learned some verbs (run, walk, jump, twist, spin, etc. etc.), made some art sculptures out of newspaper and tinfoil, read the first chapter of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (that had to be translated). In the afternoon, a dance instructor came to do PE with the students, and one of the Taiwanese ambassadors came to teach about international etiquette and manners.

The children are so cute. They were all really shy at first, but it didn’t take them long to warm up. We have one named Jason that asked a lot of questions – especially during the etiquette lesson. For example, we talked about how you should compliment the food, especially if someone at the table cooked it. He asked, “But what if it’s NOT good?” Then when we were talking about attending formal events, we mentioned that if you are taking a lady with you, it is polite to let her know that she looks nice. He, of course, wanted to know “What do I say if she doesn’t look nice?” I think we had about six different variations of that question from him. We also talked about not burping at the table… He wanted to know, “But what if I can’t stop it?” So, now he’s “honest Jason” in my head.

Good first day… tomorrow, we’ll be teaching some math (and any one that really know us know that is a pretty scary prospect) – don’t worry, we actually CAN manage addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. (= We’ll also do a little unit about Broadway musicals, and we’ll have a professional musician come in to talk about Jazz. It’s kind of a neat schedule, because along with the basics, there are some really creative activities mixed in. It’s a week long camp, during their winter break – so it’s supposed to be educational, but also fun since it’s their vacation.

We attended a local church today… I knew the tunes for a bunch of the songs, but probably only knew about five of the words in Chinese. God, Jesus, me, you, and heart. But when it comes down to it, isn’t that pretty much the core of it all anyway??