Chinese New Year - Part 1

As always, click on the photos to enlarge.

New Year's Eve

Chyo, his dad, mom, and brother	OK, enough posing, let's eat!	Yum!

The Chinese words for 'fish' (魚) and 'surplus' (餘) sound exactly the same (yú); therefore, the fish on the table is not eaten completely, in order to ensure abundance in the coming new year.

I received my very first hong bao (red envelope with cash!)	After dinner we played a dice gambling game	Here I am losing my hong bao

New Year's Day
We visited many temples that day. The first was the local temple (土地公 tŭ dì gōng) that every neighborhood has.

It was a cold, rainy day (can you tell?) so we stopped for some coffee and pastries before heading to the next temple.

There are other activities at the temple besides praying...

The Taiwanese love their puppet shows	2009—Year of the ox	Can you see why this pig symbolizes fertility?

The temple grounds...

...and some details

I think we all enjoyed ourselves...

During the course of the day we visited several more temples. After a while they all started to blur together for me, so the following photos are in no particular order: