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and HOLIDAYS
 3/21/2002- Spring Equinox The fourth of the Seasons series, which began with summer last year. This springtime picture was done with ink outline and colored pencil shading. 
 2/12/2002- Happy New Year The Lunar New Year, pegged to the lunar calendar, falls on different solar days each year, usually in late January or early February. The New Year is the traditional holiday- lots of food, lots of rituals, people gathering together, lots of food, lots of food, lots of food, lots of fun. Read more on the story and the food. Yummy!  1/1/2002- Happy New Year Under the fireworks' and the skyline's glow, sixteen representative Taiwanimation characters ring in the new year.  12/25/2001- Merry Christmas In this improbable scene, Taipei freezes over for a white Christmas.  10/23/2001- Mole Day A holiday for (what?!) Chemistry. Mega Mole comic Official Mole Day site  10/10/2001- Double Tenth (ROC National Day) Day marking the founding of the Republic of China. Story of Taiwan Economic Miracle. Well it's really not a miracle, it's came from many people's hard work. The subject of the picture is fully explained.  10/01/2001- Mid Autumn Festival aka Moon Festival One of the three main holidays of the lunar calendar, the Mid Autumn Festival marks the height of the harvest season. The moon is larger and rounder than ever this night. During the harvest time, families and villages got together to help harvest the crops, aided by the bright moon which allowed working throughout the night. When the harvest was done, everyone would enjoy a night out under the bright moon, chatting with one another and eating. Nowadays, as village harvests are less common, people just skip right to the second part. Needless to say, there's a folktale about the holiday, the one of the Moon Lady. Here's my retelling of it. The picture says on the right "Happy Mid-Autumn" and on the left "Under the full moon everyone comes together" (Yueh yuan, jen [tuan] yuan). The character yuan (round) in this case both holds its literal sense, and also means getting together (lit: forming a circle). It can also be interpreted as Moon round, People round, a reference to the large-scale consumption of both the famed lard-loaded mooncakes and also the less famous but equally delicious fruit called the yoh-tzi, which looks and tastes like a giant grapefruit, but without the sourness. Speaking of mooncakes, here's your mooncake lowdown. 1. Moon cakes are typically about 6 cm in diameter, and 4 cm high. They come in boxes, usually in even numbers. Your best bet is the 12-pack because it's easy to split among any number of people. They are pastry substances with an inside of something yummy and an outside of pastry dough. The dough is held together by lard. (See #5) 2. The nicer ones are the ones with a deep orange hue and stamped with a seal marking the interior contents. The more ordinary ones (no difference in taste though!) are a light color and may also be marked, or are simply blank. 3. The most popular contents are red bean paste (Tou sha), date paste (Tsao ni), Lian tzi (English translation unknown), pineapple, and tea. That's not saying other types don't exist, for example, other contents include honey, toffee, peanut butter, and even secret messages. Go read the story and at the bottom it explains the thing with secret messages. 4. Making moon cakes is a real pain and I tried it once and don't plan on doing it again. 5. Moon cakes are among the most fattening things you'll ever eat. So much for "real" Chinese food being healthy, huh? 6. You can get them cheaper the day after the festival, if you really want to try some. 7. Enough discussion, go eat some yourself.  9/20/2001- Autumn Equinox Autumn has finally come. The Equinox is the day right between the longest day and the shortest day. Whether or not the leaves turn red on the trees in your area, it makes for a spectacular visual. The red leaves fluttering through the air...the tree-lined tunnel...the bold orange rays of the sun...romantic, isn't it?  9/2/2001- Chung Yuan Festival aka Ghost Day Quite a few holidays this time of year! (and yes, there are more to come.) This one, on the 15th of the 7th lunar month, is Ghost Day. Actually, I forgot to mention this before, but the 7th month is also the Ghost Month. Heh heh, Oriental ghosts get all the fun, huh, having a whole month to come out into the world rather than just a day. The day is marked by a huge prayer and offering. In front of their houses, people put out tables of food as an offering to the visiting spirits, so they won't cause trouble. Now, this offering is a little different from most, though. With the average altar offering, the food is taken back and consumed once the spirits eat the spiritual part of it. With Chung Yuan (literally Mid Yuan) Festival though, that food placed out on the tables is up for grabs for everyone, not just the spirits. To be honest, I've never seen a ghost eat from one of them tables- the pic here offers a possible explanation as to why. The lines of poetry are as follows: Having passed away for a hundred years, We return to dine on Ghost Day. But the strange food before us; We know not how to eat. After having written the four lines I wondered, what is the future of the culinary arts? You can't record a gourmet dish, nor can a meal be put in a museum. A cookbook may offer some approximation, but it's still far from the original, due to the food used, the way its cooked; already the old round electric rice cookers are harder and harder to find since electronic rice cookers came out, forget about the old ways, nobody cooks that way anymore! Hmm, some real food for thought, huh? Anyway, back to the holiday. When you've got 20-story apartment blocks of people putting out food in front of the building, the sidewalks are lined with tables of FREE FOOD. Now it just happens that this year Ghost Day falls on the last weekend before school, so go figure. Hey, just because our ancestors might not know how to open a soda can or tear open a plastic wrapper doesn't mean that I don't...  8/25/2001- Lunar Calendar Double Seventh aka Lover's Day This holiday comes from a folktale about a farmer, his cow, and the weaver girl. The story begins like this. The farmer had an old cow who had been his faithful companion for many years. He was able to communicate with his cow. However, besides this cow, he had no companion. One day, when his cow was getting old, it told him that when he [the cow] died, the farmer was to do something (i forgot the details here, but it's not important) and something good would happen. So, that night, the farmer did what the cow told him to do, and out of the sky came a beautiful young girl. The two got to know each other and soon developed a romantic relationship. The girl was the weaver girl, a minor goddess. Eventually, though, the bigger gods got wind of this affair, and decided to put an end to it by taking the girl back. So, because they were gods, they simply did it, pulling her back up into the sky. Naturally, the farmer didn't take this very well, so he chased after her up into the sky. However, the gods are gods after all and are quite powerful, so they split the sky with a river (the Milky Way) and seperated the two. Someone felt bad for them though, so every year on the seventh day of the seventh month of the lunar calendar, a bridge of magpies forms across the river (are there meteor showers in late August, or do magpies migrate at night?) and the two get to meet again. And that is how it has been so on and so forth. Incidentally, there is a "Cow Farmer" star and "Weaver Girl" star, but I don't remember their English names.  6/25/2001- Lunar Calendar Double Fifth aka Dragon Boat Festival  6/21/2001- In commemoration of the longest day of the year and the beginning of summer |