Chinese New Year

A couple days after we arrived in Taiwan we celebrated Chinese New Year. This was my first real experience of proper Chinese New Year and it was great. In the UK we see Chinese New Year as dancing dragons, which we didn’t see in Taiwan at all (maybe they do this, maybe they don’t) but Chinese New Year for a lot of people is an excuse to meet family, eat great food, drink and gamble.

For approximately two weeks almost everywhere closes and for CNY we ate really gorgeous Chinese food prepared by Liv’s grandmother, who’s from Guangdong in China, and her mother. We had gorgeous sausages, pork in oranges and much more. Sadly I was suffering from really serious jetlag during CNY so slept through part of it but really liked it.

The day afterwards we drove down to Kenting. The drive was fairly uneventful as it was just motorway all the way (and the driving was really slow) but we did stop at a restaurant on the way that sold interesting food.

One thing I have to mention and sadly didn’t photograph were an old couple that I met in Taipei just before we drove down. We were packing our car but Liv’s cat went missing so her family were in their apartment looking for it for around 20 minutes or so. While I was waiting on my own downstairs an old husband and wife couple walked towards me giggling and said “how tall you are, you’re so high, you’re so cute”. The lady then held my arm and asked to have her photo taken. They were so so friendly and happy, really lovely couple and they kind of sum up Taiwanese people for me.

Anyway, here are some pretty poor photos of CNY and then some photos from the drive down to Kenting. Hope you like.

The above is pork loin in oranges and some kind of prawn dish. I don’t know what the prawn dish was called but both were insanely tasty.

Meat platter. The above was absolutely divine. There was a mixture of cured meet

The above is brains. In the West we’re told to eat carrots when we’re young as it makes us see in the dark. In Taiwan they eat a lot of vegetables but they’re told to eat brains as it makes them more intelligent. Whether this is true or not I’m not going to judge but while I will eat almost anything brains is one of the few things I won’t touch.