Chinese New Year's Day Activities

On New Year's Day, we basically spent the entire day lounging around eating assorted fruits and snacks in between big meals.

Dates (枣子, or zhaozi) are a big fruit for the new year, both because they are in season currently and also due to the similarity of the sound to another phrase, 早子, or zaozi, which means having the next generation / offspring early).  The Chinese are all about clever wordplay like that.

Extra large, plump dates

We stayed at a family friend's house.  They have an incredible garden full of blooming flowers.

I thought this one was beautiful, and had a most unique pattern.

This one had different color flowers blooming on the same tree!  They had very cleverly grafted a bunch of different types all onto one plant.

 This one was the most fragrant.

 A lot of food in Taiwan is so delicious because it is organic and fresh, for example, these white radishes and garlic just harvested from the mountain.

Or these home made sausages and pork belly cured and smoked in someone's backyard.

We all sat around and ate a home cooked dinner.  A lot of these dishes have symbolic meaning for the new year, like the pot of vegetables that represents long life, or some variety of fish, due to word play on the word fish.  It is a homonym for "surplus".  That's why everyone says "nian nian you yu", or "年年有鱼/余", meaning, "may you have fish/surplus every year."

We finished with some rounds of very strong tea.