"Cleaning?" I asked.
"Yes, it's for the Chinese New Year," he replied.
The Chinese New Year, also known as the Spring festival (春節) , marks a fresh start and hence requires you to clean up your place. Another time I walked in to see the big couch in front of the TV displaced, carpets hanging off the coffeetable, chairs on the dining table, and Mr. Zhang practically inside a kitchen closet cleaning something. They don't take their Spring cleaning lightly here.
Though I had a week of vacation for this festival, I heard that travel was bothersome because people flock to their home towns during this time of year to be with their family, so I decided to stay put. On Saturday you could tell there were less people in town, and on Sunday Taipei, a city usually bustling with activity, was like a ghost town. Most shops had closed for the vacation.
I walked around and noticed that almost every home or business puts up a red poster of some sort, with a sign saying "happy new year" or some variation of it. There was so much red, I felt like they were putting up these posters to prevent the angel of death from coming. Actually that's not entirely untrue, there is a story about why the Taiwanese (and Chinese in general) put up these posters. The story goes like this:
A long time ago, there was a monster called "Nian" (年, year) who lived in the mountains. When the end of the year approached, Nian liked to go into the villages to find people to eat. To protect themselves, families stayed inside. The families found out that Nian was afraid of three things: loud noises, the light of fire, and the color red. So the families put red paper outside their houses, and lit bamboo, which made a crackling sound and scared the monster away.
I live right next to a park, and believe me, they have really been scaring the monster away with the fireworks. From nightfall till sunrise, you can hear explosions. It kind of makes me feel like I'm in a warzone or something.
When people are invited to someone's house, they should bring fruit. It is a simple gift. (I know in Japan it is also customary to bring fruit when visiting a household, but I'm not sure if there's any connection. I will address similarities between Taiwan and Japan in a later post)
On Tuesday I was invited to have lunch with Mr. Zhang and his wife's family. I woke up at 8:30 that morning to the sounds of pots and pans being moved, meat being cut, stoves being lit. We had planned to have lunch at 12 noon but all the relatives hadn't arrived yet. Finally by 1pm everone had arrived. Mr. Zhang's wife's two daughters and son, as well as their spouses and children, all came to eat a massive feast. Some of them came from Taipei, others from neighboring Taoyuan county.
As we sat down to eat, the children who were old enough to run (all under five) ran around and played with the toys they had bought with their hong bao, (perhaps inadvertantly) scaring the Nian monster away. Hong bao (紅包), or red envelopes, are envelopes stuffed with cash which parents and relatives give the kids, kind of the equivalent of Western Christmas presents except you never get the "that's not what I wanted" refrain.
The meal featured dishes not just from Taiwan but from all parts of China. Spicy chicken, braised pork's feet, beef cartilage, chicken soup, roasted fish, and a few vegetables (one of the relatives actually asked me "do you eat vegetables?"). Though the meal was big, everyone quickly took things from the different dishes with their chopsticks, and the whole thing was finished by 2. Such a meal would've taken three hours in France.
Zhang's son, Ken, explained to me that on Monday, the first day of New Year's families go to the father's family and today, the second day, was the day for going to the mother's family. That's why there is traffic on every day of the festival.
I walked around and noticed that almost every home or business puts up a red poster of some sort, with a sign saying "happy new year" or some variation of it. 
When people are invited to someone's house, they should bring fruit.
Even convenience stores are decked out in red-- and sell ready-made gifts to bring to the in-laws.
On Tuesday I was invited to have lunch with Mr. Zhang and his wife's family. To find out more about Chinese New Year in Taiwan, go here.
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