Tomb Sweeping Day

Last April I was in Taiwan during the QingMing Festival (清明節), which isn't so much a festival, but a holiday when people gather with family and visit the graves and shrines of ancestors, pay their respects and tend to the grave sites. You may perhaps have heard of Tomb Sweeping Day, which is what it is commonly called in English. If I recall correctly my family observed Qingming Festival at home when I was a child with food offerings placed before photos of my grandparents as a sort of homemade shrine. This was my first time observing it in Taiwan where it is a public holiday. I won't pretend to know much about the holiday since I've spent most of my life in the USA, but if you want to learn more about Qingming Festival, you know where to look.

My paternal grandparents are buried in a cemetery near Yangmingshan National Park, which is a lovely area known for its hot springs.



Burning spirit money for our ancestors and dieties



Some tombs have been emptied and abandoned for whatever reasons, and some haven't been looked after.



My maternal grandfather is interred at this mausoleum for veterans


A family preparing their shrine


incense and candles


This furnace used to be used to burn spirit money, but it's been sealed off probably due to air pollution concerns.

Lest I leave the impression that this holiday is morose and sad, it certainly can be, but more often it's a time to gather with family. It's also a time to celebrate the arrival of spring by spending time outside. Indeed, I got the impression for many it was something like a family reunion picnic at the cemetery to spend time with ancestors.

Hello again!

Shilin Night Market


One thing I miss the most about Taiwan is the night markets. After we left the National Palace Museum, we took a bus back to the MRT station and walked over to Shilin Night Market, one of the larger more well-known night markets. We hit the street portion of the market first which is mostly clothing, shoes, accessories and other non-food goodies.






There was a slightly odd variety show on a stage outside...


All the food stalls are housed in here...most of it is closed during the day, but at night it's crowded with locals, tourists and students.


everything from bubble tea and smoothies to fried chicken and omelettes, not to mention the more tradition noodle soups and stinky tofu.


We saw a few places had a seafood dish that looked good. We picked a place to sit down, and we're handed the order form...

Challenge: neither my brother or I can call ourselves properly literate in Chinese. I can read a few characters here and there, but that doesn't really help to read this menu. A woman stood at our table waiting for us to take our order, so I just asked her straight, "What's that seafood stuff out front?" She told us and pointed to it on the order form. We ordered our two little bowls of seafood. Yay! It's always a relief when I can get through a situation like this without having to reveal that I'm actually a foreigner, and I can't read.




I wish I could blog the smell of a really pungent stinky tofu. Sometimes it's fried, sometimes not. This stuff pictured here actually wasn't that stinky compared to some others. In my experience, you can pretty much always smell a stinky tofu vendor before you see it. And the it seems like the stinkiest ones seem to be the most popular.  When I smell some stinky tofu, I always want to say, "好臭!" (It stinks!)  to which my dad likes to respond, "好香!" (smells good!)

oyster omelette




I'm actually not quite sure what this stuff is.

National Palace Museum


Hey all! Sorry for being so quiet, but I am in China right now, and this site is actually blocked over here. I can still get to it (obviously), but my connection is often slow and choppy. I post more frequently over on my tumblr because I don't have to write anything. I'm a bit behind over there, too, because I've also been having trouble getting to tumblr. What was most annoying was every time I tried to access a tumblr page it would automatically get hijacked by a Chinese search engine and redirect me to search results for tumblr. Ack! Drove me nuts! So then I cleared my cache, which worked to get rid of the search results, but also meant I had to re-log into to tumblr, which I haven't had to do in many many months, and I really wasn't sure which email I had used to log in, and finally, my VPN funked out and I haven't been able to get a 'good' connection until today to access my 'blocked' sites. Oh, bother!

Anyway, in other news...these pics are from a trip to the National Palace Museum in Taipei back in December. It houses an impressive collection of Chinese artifacts and artwork, some of them quite ancient.





A very drably dressed tour group...







There's a nice garden, too...not sure why I included the picture of the garbage man though.

We were pretty high that day


As you may notice there is a Christmas tree in the photo. Have I really been here 6 months? Not much to say about these photos. Short story: my brother and I went to Taipei 101 one slightly cloudy day in December. It was once the world's tallest building until it was surpassed by a very tall pointy thing in Dubai. The lower levels house some very posh shopping and eating. It's a great view from the top...lucky we could still see quite a bit despite the clouds.




Sign in the ladies toilet requesting they please don't squat (because we ladies know it just makes a big mess).


This is Taipei 101's enormous tuned mass damper which helps to reduce the swaying of the building during earthquakes and wind.

Chi Nan Temple


Back in December, my dad took us up to see the beautiful Chi Nan Temple (指南宮). We rode the MRT to Muzha and climbed the "1000" steps to the temple. We didn't count the steps, but if I recall correctly it took us about 20 minutes of swift stepping to reach the temple. It was late afternoon on a Thursday, very few visitors. It was humid, but peaceful, and the air smelled like Osmanthus flowers. definitely worth the climb.




You can see Taipei 101 in the distance, at one time the tallest building in the world.