Lantern Festival 2008

Today, people in Taiwan celebrate the Lantern Festival. Chinese tradition says that at the very beginning of a new year, when there is a bright full moon hanging in the sky for the first time in the new year, there should be thousands of colorful lanterns hung out for people to appreciate.
In Taipei, they have a large exhibition of these laterns near the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, which is on display for several days. Yesterday, we went to see them. The lanterns are often several meters large constructs of figures or buildings, which are illuminated from inside. Most of the lantern adopted the theme of the Year of the Mouse (or Rat - the Chinese only knows one character for mouse and rat). In a way, they have something in common with the Zugslaternen of the Basler Fasnacht.

Some have traditional motives like this one, where mice are carrying a dragon (right) and a lion (left):

A dragon boat race:

A wedding procession accompanying the bride, who is carried in the palanquin to the groom's house:

Others display religious contents. Here, the Goddess of the Sea watches over the fisherboats:


We also found a Christian nativity scene:














There are different modern themes, too:


And also some beautifully painted smaller lanterns:


Here is the one Micha likes most:

(By the way, the weather got much nicer in the last days and we have had now some dry days with even sunshine and 20 degrees Celcius! Let's hope that we now can store away our heater and the woolen caps.)

Living through the winter monsoon

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain ... That pretty much describes the weather conditions in the last, say, 3 weeks or so. If you're closely following our blog, you might have already seen that the photos of previous postings were all taken in rainy conditions.
The trouble is not the rain itself but the circumstances that a) the outside temperature is usually between 9 and 14°C and b) temperatures inside our apartment and offices are only slightly higher. That is due to the poor insulation of the buildings here. As a result, we congregate around our newly bought small electrical heater the moment we get home after work:

Another way to get warm is to turn on the gas cooker:


There is more bad news for us here: the weatherforecast for the coming week promises still more precipitation! I recommend you to have a look at the website of the Taiwanese Central Weather Bureau:
http://www.cwb.gov.tw/V5e/
The Central Weather Bureau (CWB) website is really excellent - except for the forecast it provides for the Taipei region ... Jokes aside, it is really full of useful informations. The CWB is also responsible for monitoring the seismic activity in Taiwan. On the website's menu bar on the left, you find an entry for "seismicity". There, one can find the seismic activity organised in monthly maps and spreadsheets. It is noteworthy that there have been dozens of earthquakes around ML 4 and above in the last weeks. However, nobody (except the CWB) reports much about them. I recall what a public turmoil a few earthquakes around ML 3 in Basel have caused in December 2006. In Taiwan, nobody seems to bother about earthquakes below ML 6 or so.

The National Palace Museum and its greedy fish

As it was raining on Chinese New Year Day (it's raining since weeks!!!), we visited the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This museum exhibits the world's finest collection of Chinese Art. If you are interested, then we recommend you to have a look at their outstanding homepage, where you can learn a lot about Chinese culture and the exhibitions offered in the museum.

www.npm.gov.tw/en/home.htm

We did not take any fotos inside the museum as firstly, it's restricted, and secondly, you can buy a wonderful catalogue with magnificent photos of the items, with a quality of the photos, which you can never achieve on your own. But in order not to finish this posting without some pictures, we show you some taken just outside of the museum and from the Chih-te Garden.

In front of the museum, a pair of imperial guardian lions, also called Fu Lions, is watching the entrance. These statues are believed to have protective powers and traditionally stood in front of Chinese Imperial palaces, temples, offices,... The female stands on the left and the male on the right. The male lion has his right paw on a ball. The female is essentially identical, but has a single cub under her left paw.

(And these guardian lions are also the solution of our last picture riddle. The particular picture was a close-up of the mane of a male lion guarding a bridge in the Taroko Gorge. Here he is in his full majesty:)

The lovely Chih-te Garden is situated next to the museum. Although small, it is nicely designed, with little winding paths, wooden arcades, open tea houses, waterfalls and goldfish ponds.


And in these fishponds, we found the most greedy goldfish we have ever seen.


They are really big fish - the largest being more than half a meter long - and are either black, white, yellow, orange or speckled in all possible color combinations. And feeding them is a really funny entertainment! While greedily ripping open their mouths, one has a peculiar view even into the deepest part of their stomachs!

And we close this posting with two more pictures from the garden and the rain.