Chinese New Year's Eve

It's a busy time in Taiwan now as today is Chinese New Year's. Some companies are shutdown from January 21st to the 29th! But some are are open 24 hours like always, thank goodness for 7-11 and self-service laundromats.

This is the first time Florence and I have been Taiwan for Chinese New Year's(CNY) in almost 20 years. CNY with Florence's family is more like Thanksgiving and Christmas at the same time. It's more of a family time than Western New Year's.

The Thanksgiving part is all about the food. Big meals for assorted specialties. Maybe in the past these dishes were all cooked my the hostess of the festivities, but nowadays they are catered affairs. Days ahead of CNY you can order the dishes for the number of people coming. This lets everyone enjoy the day without too much time in the kitchen.

The Christmas part of it is the "Red Envelope" part. The older generation gives "red envelopes" to the younger generation. With the younger generation promising to be good and work hard in school. A family oriented version of "income redistribution".

My camera battery ran out during the day but I did get some good pictures.
This is Florence's oldest brother's family. The youngest is holding her red envelopes.

Here is the host and hostess, Second Brother and his wife.  The dishes are arrayed in front.

And Florence and I with a little girl that thinks she should be every picture. And I agree she improves any picture.

After the meal, we play games like MahJong, Jailong and  Dice games. Money always makes the games more interesting. And  there is always drinking, all the expensive hard liquor comes out and pacing becomes important. Don't let others push you to drink more than you can handle.