Email 13: I’ll Blog Home for Christmas 2 (with a Vengeance)

My second Christmas was really only Christmas in that it took place on Christmas Eve. The girls I met when wandering around the sheep fields invited me to go with them on a day trip to Pingdong on December 24^th.

Pingdong is only an hour or so away from Gaoxiong; it has a Hakka Cultural Center there which we went to visit. Hakka people originate from southern China and many immigrated to Taiwan from Guangdong. They are now the second largest ethnic group in Taiwan (about 20%) and they have their own language (though they all speak Mandarin now too).

The Hakka Cultural Center is a circle of buildings surrounding a giant replica of a traditional Hakka house, which looks a lot like a much warmer igloo. Once you get through that you can wander around the different exhibits showcasing (surprisingly enough) Hakka culture. One thing they’re famous for is painting paper umbrellas. They have an umbrella station full of beautiful art we can twirl.

The second artistic stop was the painted rock studio. Here, a master of painted rocks who has been doing this kind of work for over forty years displays his finest rocks. He was excited that I could speak Mandarin and we ended up speaking for an hour about his traditional paintings. He explained the different sayings and paintings of the Hakka, and before I left he gave me a rock with a popular Hakka saying: Work in the sunny season, study in the rainy season.

Meanwhile, during my long chat with the painter, my friends were all busy painting their own miniature umbrella with their names, dates, and a small flower. They asked me to add my name and flower, and then they gave it to me as a memento of the trip! The Taiwanese (speaking generally) are so kind and friendly (particularly to Westerners) and I felt so fortunate to be invited on their trip. They’re all best friends, so it was nice of them to drag me along.

After the arts and crafts, we visited the history part of the exhibit, and then wandered out into the courtyard to score some thick Hakka noodles and amazing bean paste dessert buns. Because it was Christmas Eve, the courtyard had singers set up and they even had a gingerbread-making station where you could pay an exorbitant amount of money to decorate the cookies yourself. The girls were all excited about the new experience, so they sat down and made cookies while I took pictures. Then we wandered around the lake area where, in typical Taiwanese fashion, we had to stop and take a picture with every strange rock or flower.

Around 4 that evening we hopped back in their cars and headed into the town of Pingdong. There’s a big white Catholic church that was decked out in bright lights and sported a huge Christmas tree in the courtyard. 

As we walked through the streets, I was the only one who seemed to notice that interspersed between the bells, angels, and Santa Clause decorations were some bunnies and four-leaf clovers. I asked my friends why they were there, one said matter of factly: “Well, it’s the year of the rabbit.” Ok…, but what are they doing with Christmas decorations??? I guess the people hanging them up figured they’d kill two holidays with one stone. 

Then someone else interjected “And the clovers are lucky!” Luck is a huge part of Taiwanese religion; it seems every god and every festival can bring fortune or keep away bad fortune, so mixing in Western fortune with Western religion just seemed like the natural thing to do. Near the car park was a giant Christmas tree made of lights with a Santa sign in front where kids could write their Santa wishes and hang them around the tree. This is another perfect example of the blend of cultures in Taiwan because traditionally (and even today), children write their wishes on yellow paper and attach them to doors at temples or schools. Now, instead of wishing for good grades from Confucius, they get iPhones from Santa.

After we wandered the streets and enjoyed the lights, we all went back to one girl’s house where her parents had a huge meal waiting for us. The lantern festival was quickly approaching (it’s in February and coincided with New Years this year) so her mom made us all some tang yuan (soup balls). They’re rice flour mixed with sweet potatoes, taro (a purple potato), and, well, potatoes, which are then rolled into balls and put into soup (hence the name…). They’re a little sweet and are therefore considered a dessert. When you’re a kid, you’re supposed to eat them to add more years to your life, but as a joke they say grown women shouldn’t eat them because they make you age a year for each one you eat!

I finally got home around 9pm that night, a full day’s travelling, but the Taiwanese Christmas Eve celebration was far from over. Walking down the little alley that led to my house, I was quickly caught up in a huge parade, the biggest I’d ever seen near that temple. There were 10 foot puppet dancers who represented the god’s warrior protectors, lion dances, lines of drummers beating out the chants, mock battles, and, of course, the god itself carried in on people’s shoulders. I stayed for the fireworks towards the end and managed to get a teenage boy to explain what was happening. 

He said it’d been running all day long; I stayed for an hour, and then finally went home but it was still going strong when I left. This was another god’s birthday, but apparently he was a very big god (the boy wasn’t sure why, he just said he protected everyone and brought good fortune, which is what they all seem to do. I’m sure there’s a more detailed explanation somewhere, but he didn't know). Even during this religious festival, there was a little Western influence seeping in as several groups of parade participants were wearing Santa hats as they marched through the streets!

Once home, I collapsed in bed and then got up the next day for Christmas at the church. Bree and Luc gave me an AWESOME umbrella sword 

(back home I have a sword that looks like an umbrella, now I have an umbrella that looks 

like a sword, my life is complete). We had a big pot-luck dinner afterwards that included a healthy blend of Western and Taiwanese food, much like my Christmas celebrations had been. Then we all went our separate ways and prepared for the next big holiday, Chinese New Year.