The Lantern Festival (元宵节) is annually on the 15th day of the lunar year, this year February 21, 2008. Yesterday my Fo Guang friend Aaron and I, after buying textbooks for our upcoming classical Chinese course, met up with Michelle and Jerry in Taipei to check out the lanterns at Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall. Jerry took us first, though, to a casual but very authentic Japanese restaurant, famous for their eel. (Here’s Michelle and Aaron, below:)
It’s been two weeks now since Chinese New Year—I suppose it’s about time to write up the final adventures of my New Year break. My friend Andy from college who is Taiwanese-American came back to Taiwan to celebrate the New Year and invited me to tag along.
The adventure began now three Wednesdays ago, when I took the high speed rail down to Kaohsiung (高雄). Andy showed me around the city a little bit (including the nearby temple with the European-looking knight) and we had the traditional New Year’s Eve dinner, which is one of the most important parts of the New Year. We all stayed up watching TV (and the adults playing Mahjong), then Andy and I then set off some fire crackers at midnight.