belated last day in Taiwan

We've been home for three days now, BUT I didn't want to forget to write about

(1) the Alphonse Mucha exhibit that I went to at the art museum in the park down the road from the flat: a little funny to be going to see drapy Art Nouveau ladies in Kaohsiung, but wot the hell. I have to say, it was a totally excellent exhibit, much, much better than I was expecting (mostly because I thought I had grown out of my taste for Mucha). I had no idea the depth and breadth of his work: he's famous for the drapy ladies, but boyfriend put in his time doing beautifully detailed immaculate drawings of flowers, turtles, fish, insects, horses; dark scary quickie sketches of abandoned dead people and animals in the streets of Paris; serious realistic portraits of people (my favourite was the portrait of his daughter Jaroslava:

(btw how awesome is the name jaroslava?!?). Almost more impressive than the variety of styles he drew/painted in was the sheer quantity of work he put out: he was definitely not of the artist-as-lily-in-the-field school, but a very, very hardworking guy. In addition to the theatre posters that made him famous, he painted/drew portraits, designed crockery/silverware/wallpaper/biscuit tins, did the illustrations for several art books, painted a series of ginormous murals for the City Hall of his hometown in Czechoslovakia, etc etc etc. I don't necessarily love all of his art (or even most of it) but he was fantastically professionally good at what he did, and it's SO INTERESTING to look up close at his technique. There were also several hilarious and endearing photos of the Paris bohemian set cavorting in his studio - Gauguin playing the piano in his underwear, models lounging around on ladders wearing nothing but lace up boots, etc.

(2) the lunch we had on the last day at the "Spanish Latin American" restaurant: the sign outside had a picture of a flamenco dancer on it, the tables were decorated with traditional Guatemalan woven table cloths, the wall decorations consisted of abstract vaguely Incan (?) themed paintings involving people screaming and human sacrifice (makes you wonder a bit what's going on in the kitchen....) and plastic Chilean flags. The woman who runs the place is apparently Bolivian, married to a Taiwanese man (who I am now realizing must have been the one to let me into the incredibly cramped messy back office so that I could have somewhere to change the baby other than the filthy bathroom floor). The menu had such Spanish/Latin American classics as "Espagueti with meatballs" and "Apple Pay;" we decided that the theme of the restaurant wasn't so much Latin food as "every culture that's not Taiwanese food." I had tacos (delicious); baby had empanadas (also delicious but so thermonuclear hot that no-one could eat them until about an hour after everyone else's food had arrived); babydaddy had squid and squid ink (served separately) which was apparently revolting.
I think that I officially cannot eat squid/octopus anymore; I don't think I could ever go completely vegetarian, despite the health pitfalls and the moral dubiousness of carnivorism (carnivory?), but after I saw a brilliant documentary about octopuses at the Exploratorium a couple of years ago, I have crossed octopus off the list. They've got way too much intelligence and personality, and I can't claim that I ever found them that delicious; mostly it was the fried breaded business that surrounded them, and shit, you can get that with onion rings.

Anyway.

Back home to pack, then to the airport (I managed to leave in Taiwan, that I have figured out so far at least: my house keys, my camera, and the eight of spades from the Fish of Eastern Taiwan playing card deck that cousin S. gave the behbeh). The flight back was actually OK from a baby standpoint (she was brilliant and slept about ten hours straight, waking up to meep only occasionally) although it was horrible from a me standpoint (crick in neck, headache, nose feeling like the Sahara Desert, fell asleep watching Moneyball and kept being jolted awake by the really annoying phone ring of one of the characters), and I can only imagine how horrible it was for babydaddy, who gamely took the middle seat, didn't get up once in fourteen hours to pee, and has femurs twice the length of the average person, so has to sit with his knees bent up around his ears. We had a little drama on the way out of the airport with not one but two pieces of baggage getting left behind (one in the airplane, one in Customs) (do you like how I neatly avoid a blame-apportioning pronoun in this sentence? :)) but luckily all was well that ended well and we finally staggered home with all our bits and pieces more or less intact and BOY was it nice to walk through the front door.

The next challenge will be to see if I can survive

- jetlag plus

- baby jetlag (having a baby with jetlag adds a whole new dimension to recovering from your own jetlag, turns out), plus

- baby getting weaned off her pacifier and bottle (on the premise that a week of concentrated pain is better than two weeks of medium pain) plus

- going back to work, where the computer system has been down for the whole time I've been away and entropy is definitely winning

- recent news that i have a rodent infestation of some sort in the crawl space in the attic of my house (this coming on top of multiple recent expensive plumbing adventures...)

- ongoing negotiations re: Where and How to Live once the rent (we anticipate) skyrockets in September

ayayayayayay. ohhhhmmmmmmmm. wish me nerves of steel and purity of heart, for I will need them.

good night to all...

quicky!

Ticking time bomb is asleep in her tent next to me, but will wake up at any second, so this will (likely) be short. Due to a misguided couple of sips of caffeinated iced tea that I let her have yesterday afternoon, I wasn't able to wrestle her down to sleep until 11:30 pm (ouch) which means that she will likely be grumpy and hungover when she does wake up this morning. Note to self: do not allow baby caffeine.

Yesterday wild mama H. fixed up for us all to go and get a formal family portrait photo taken at one of the many wedding photo salons that are in Kaohsiung. Turns out Taiwan is the wedding photo capital of Asia, if not the world: people travel from all over Asia to take their wedding photos (well before the big day, in most cases), and for the low, low price of several thousand dollars, you get: full hair and makeup, multiple snazzy outfit changes, and photos of you and your intended stretched out on white grand pianos under chandeliers, standing under a Photoshopped waterfall, with angel wings, under a jungle canopy, etc etc. So exciting! It almost made me want to get married. Almost.

We went for the more basic family photo package (one with a white background, one with a brown background, and a few snaps of the little girls romping around trying to take Mickey Mouse soft toys from each other, baby drooling madly the whole time as she has got a canine (!) coming in, so she looks a bit retarded in all the pics, unfortunately) but we did get a quick session out the back of the studio where they have a (1) mock Tudor doorway (2) an artfully peeling barn door and (3) a bus shelter on a trendy Prague street. We had the photographer's assistant gamely waving teddybears at baby to get her to look at the camera with a cheerful expression, but when it came time for the pic of just babydaddy, baby, and me, we had the entire clan jumping up and down madly waving an army of teddies, Snoopies, Mickeys, etc. and manically shouting Whee! Hooray! and I couldn't stop giggling (difficult for photo-taking).

After our morning photo shoot, we piled into the car to go off to lunch; this was nothing short of terrifying, as for various stupid logistical reasons I was riding shotgun with baby strapped onto my front, which meant that for the first time I was made aware of just how terrifyingly bad papa H's driving is (until now, I have been in the back of the minivan, so I am aware of jolts and sudden stops, but not so much the reason for them.) We ran a red light, despite my saying several seconds before the red light "um red light red light RED LIGHT STOP STOP STOP!" in a panicked voice, and nearly killed several moped drivers. I don't know how to say this nicely, but it really makes me think twice about sending baby back to Taiwan for future solo visits. Hmm. Will consider. Anyway.

Lunch at posh restaurant (this was the Payback Lunch where babydaddy and Big Kahuna were expected to treat about fifty cousins, and sure enough, about fifty assorted relatives showed up, including some I hadn't yet met - not sure how that factors into the Payback Equation). Lunch was totally delicious (thank you babydaddy) and, because it was a buffet, I made a total pig of myself; diet definitely starts tomorrow...

and then after that cousin L. took me, Big Kahuna, and wild-brother-in-law for a little spin around the trendy street market where if you are nineteen with too much money to burn you hang out. She was incredibly enthusiastic, and took us into all sorts of shops I never would have gone into on my own, and despite the very high Hello Kitty/rhinestone factor, I did actually emerge from the afternoon with several purchases: a delicious cabbage and pork steamed bun, a bowl of shaved ice and fruit, a pair of surgical masks forbabydaddy (one a crisp pin striped seersucker, and the other a funky retro 60's breakfast cereal pattern for when he's feeling a little wild and crazy), and a pair of shark socks for baby.

It was a little weird to be away from baby for that long (nearly four hours), and clearly she thought so too, because I was greeted at the door when we finally got home by a leg-clutching hugging mama!-ing tornado, which is the closest I will ever get to being a movie star, I think. (The tornado was dressed very classically in black with pearls - black onesie and a string of oversized plastic faux pearls which babydaddy had repurposed from some fabulous gay event to the small-children-airplane-entertainment cache, and baby has gotten very attached to them. She likes to wave them around her head suggestively, and thus they have been christened her stripper beads). Nadal very gratifyingly beat Federer over dinner, and then the rest of the evening was devoted to endless stories, singing, and milk to try and convince baby that she needed (for which read, "I needed her") to go to BED....

tonight we leave, so no bloggy tonight. Wish us luck for the plane....

aborted trip to tainan

Today was officially a bust but actually was just fine, with the exception of a small stretch of time stuck in a traffic jam with a psychotic toddler. The plan was to go to Tainan, wild mama H's home stomping ground about half an hour (ha ha) north of Kaohsiung and see ye olde Taiwane (which apparently there is a lot of in Tainan) but during the two weeks between Chinese New Year and the Lantern Festival everyone and his brother wants to go from somewhere in Taiwan to somewhere else, which means that traffic is horrreeeeeble. The drive to the freeway entrance took us an hour by which time two-year-old niece was frantic with rage at being strapped into her carseat; imagine prolonged grand mal seizure plus a noise like cats being tortured).

We also managed to lose the cousins we were supposed to be following; wild papa H., who, Lord love him, is a somewhat scary erratic driver to start with, drove through a highway tollbooth that required a special ticket that he didn't have, which meant that he had to stop and wait while the tollbooth operator very nicely took his money, ran to the other booth, paid for his ticket, and then came back with his change (!), something I cannot imagine happening in the US. There was thankfully at least one cellphone per car, so we did manage to find each other eventually, but since no one knew Tainan well, and no one (as it turned out) was super clear on exactly where in Tainan we were supposed to be going, there were rather more U-turns in the middle of horrendously busy intersections than I'm guessing the writers of the Taiwanese drivers' test would have sanctioned.

We ended up at an outdoor mini funfair that was being held on the grounds outside of what I think was Taiwan's oldest Confucian temple, and the irony of calm ancient building dedicated to wisdom and serenity being used as a venue for loud crass plastic blaring pop music junk food extravaganza was hard to miss. However, the sun was shining, and we were no longer in the car, and at one point baby and I went for a little walk, and she got to be in charge of where we went, so we ended up behind the tents of some of the food stalls to investigate the tent pegs, and we met a nice man in a Japanese chef outfit eating his noodles and banana for lunch, and he and baby were VERY taken with each other (although baby may have been primarily motivated by interest in the banana). At his request, I took a picture of him w/ baby on his camera; I often wonder what all these people who snap pics of her/us do with the photos: do they have scrapbook pages labelled "Me with Random Eurasian Baby!!" that they show off to all their friends? are they a private viewing pleasure? or are they subsequently sold for vast sums to advertising companies who like to use cute Eurasian babies in their ad campaigns?

She also had a consecrated nappy change actually on the altar whatsit of the Confucius temple (babydaddy was in charge of that nappy change; I take no responsibility for any divine consequences of that one).

We tried after that to go look at some other historical site but the traffic was awful and the parking was awful and the lines were awful so we decided to just call it a day and go back to Kaohsiung. Psychotoddler had screamed herself out at that point, and had turned into sweetly asleep toddler, so we snoozed our way home, watched Djocovic trounce Ferrer in the quarter finals of the Australian Open (too bad), read some books about owls and cats (lots of hoo hoo mao mao-ing), and off to bed.

A jolly good day...

...as babydaddy has enjoyed saying recently. I went for an early morning fat-wobble around the park, which probably did very little for my virtue or my overall fitness level, but was rather nice if only for the profound strangeness of being completely alone after two weeks of intensive high-density family time (the loo being the only time/place for solitary contemplation, and even loo time isn't necessarily sacred with the behbeh, as she likes to fiddle with the buttons on the bidet thingy, which can make for the occasional surprise on the crapper). After breakfast (croissants. any fitness effects of fat-wobble instantly counteracted. oh well) Papa H. came and collected the circus in the minivan to go to the harbor to take the ferry over to the older, calmer, quieter part of Kaohsiung where the old fort & the lighthouse are. He said that he himself had only been there for the first time this year, as it had all been off limits under military jurisdiction until a few years ago.

The fort is now a derelict warren of cement bunkers sunk into the hillside; it was built originally during the Qing dynasty as a defense against the Japanese, and then when the Japanese took over Taiwan at the end of the nineteenth century they took it over and used it during WWII to fight off the Allies. I am really intrigued by the attitude towards the Japanese here; in the history section of the National Geographic guidebook, it says that the Japanese imposed a fairly brutal military rule over the Taiwanese for the first half of the twentieth century but that they also modernized and organized the island in a way that no one previously had been able to do (railways, telecommunications, etc.). When they were kicked out after WWII and the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang government took over, the Taiwanese were initially "elated" (according to my book) but soon realized they'd traded in the frying pan for the fire. Many elderly people who came of age under Japanese rule (babydaddy's grandmother, for one) are very pro-Japanese, an attitude that has apparently persisted, despite the fact that the Japanese arrived as conquering invaders, and even more weirdly, the Kuomintang is still one of the two dominant political parties here, despite the hash that Chiang Kai-shek made of running the country after the Japanese were kicked out. Anyway. I digress. The fort was fun to climb around, especially on a brilliantly sunny day with views out over the bright blue ocean for miles and miles, and jungle behind. Lighthouse ditto.

We had another paparazzi experience on the ferry coming back; I haven't figured out whether it's the exotic factor of being foreigners, or the freak factor of being mixies, or just that they are both extraordinarily cute (I choose to believe the latter) but both baby and her cousin get an inordinate amount of attention when we are out, and occasionally there's a mini mob scene of people wanting to touch them, take pictures of them, etc. (I am not making this up). I got told off by a lady who wanted to tell me how cute the baby was that she thought it was disgraceful that I had a half-Taiwanese one-year-old and that I still didn't speak Chinese, but, hey, she told me in Chinese, so I said thank you and nodded and smiled, which works brilliantly. I still think it's amazing that I can very, very occasionally figure out what the conversation is about (I do best with conversations involving cats, fish, and flowers, especially if the location of cats/fish/flowers is being discussed, but I can branch out and discuss tigers, dragons, frogs, rabbits, and noodles when the situation demands).

Next stop on the papa H. tour was the ex-British consular residence, which in standard high-handed colonial style consisted of a Victorian pile of bricks bang next to an elaborate dragon-infested temple on probably the most primo piece of real estate in Kaohsiung. (Rule Britannia! Snag the best piece of land going and never mind the brown people who've been there for generations!) I did learn about Robert Swinhoe, however, who sounds like he must have been a pretty interesting dinner companion - in addition to helping broker treaties between the English and the Chinese during the Opium Wars, because he was one of the few Brits who spoke Chinese, he also found time to be one of the first British consuls to Taiwan AND be one of the foremost naturalists of his generation, getting a whole pile of species endemic to Taiwan named after him. (And he did all that before he died in his early 40's, which means that I need to get cracking if I am going to be famous. Writing a blog that only my parents read just isn't going to cut it... :p)

The temple incidentally had a little sign which read "Speak kind words, think good thoughts, do good deeds, and follow the right path," which sort of says it all, I think.

Home for lunch and nap and more of the Australian Open (I am intrigued by Nadal's complete lack of upper lip and am worried he might have fetal alcohol syndrome, but cannot find any confirming rumours on the internet - anyone?) and then out for dinner at a fancypants restaurant with cousins. I am profoundly glad that I am (as a clueless white person) out of the loop of the whole politics of money/food here. The drama of Who Pays for the Meal beggars description. Babydaddy and Big Kahuna are expected to take about fifty cousins out to dinner on Thursday night, and EVERYONE IS WATCHING to make sure that the meal is sufficiently expensive to satisfy honour. Me, I eat what's put in front of me, do my best to make sure that the baby eats what's put in front of her rather than rubbing it in her hair (varying degrees of success with that one), and say thank you nicely, and thank Christ that I don't seem to be expected to participate beyond that.

Tonight's restaurant was several floors of banquet tables decked out in schlock-Versailles: fringes of chandelier crystals everywhere, red and gold wallpaper, a chair rail incorporating a motif of cherubs modestly kitted out in (I am not making this up) hot pants & halter tops. There is very little effort to disguise the behind-the-scenes action, which is sort of interesting - at one point the baby was squawking, so I took her for a little walk around the restaurant in the vain hope that she would fall asleep in the backpack thingy, and we wandered into a largeish room right next to the Ladies' where folding tables were shoved in a pile, there was a mop and a bucket of some dirty water, someone's chef whites on a hook, etc. I rocked her and sang her some Paul Simon and did my very best to come up with a concise foolproof explanation as to why I would be hiding behind a stack of chairs in a dark room with my baby that would possibly make sense to a Chinese-only speaking waiter, but in the end decided that she wasn't going to sleep and there wasn't an easy explanation, so we went back to the table and shoved bits of fish down her until she stopped squawking. I think she is going through some sort of bionic growth spurt right now; she actually ate more at dinner than I did.

And now in bed - a sweet and prolonged bedtime with baby, reading books and singing all three of us on the bed together until she finally keeled over into favored sleeping position (triangular, with bum at apex of triangle). Babydaddy and siblings have headed out to hit the party scene with some cousins, and I am tucked up in bed hoping very much that I do not have a sore throat. We'll find out in the morning whether I actually do or not; we are scheduled to go to Tainan for the day, hometown of wild mama H., and possibly to go to a portrait studio to get a formal family portrait done. Big Kahuna says some of the posher portrait studios have wind machines so you can have the full hair-blowing-around supermodel effect, which I definitely, definitely want.

In the meantime: good night and good luck.

New Year's Day

Quick start this morning: we overslept and had two minutes to get ourselves & baby out of bed and into the minivan to get to the temple before the ancestor-worshiping crowds arrived, and I am proud to say that the baby-prep machine was well-oiled and functioning perfectly and we were on our way within the requisite 120 seconds.

The ancestors in question are wild papa H's parents, who live in fancy jars on a shelf in a temple along with about ten thousand other people's ancestors in jars. Despite our having gotten out the door so impressively efficiently we were battling pretty significant crowds climbing the stairs to the fourth floor of the temple; when you get to to the altar of the floor where your ancestors are parked, a monk hands you an incense stick, which you hold while you have a brief inner chat with the ancestors/Buddha, and wild mama H. had brought a bowl of kiwis and oranges for the ancestors to leave on the table in front of the Buddha.

We then went and said hello to the jar with the ancestors in it (interestingly you are supposed to spend long enough doing this that the ancestors have time to eat some of the fruit you brought before you take it away again) and then wild mama H., Big Kahuna, and wild brother-in-law went to go help ring the ginormous temple bell. I have no idea why more people were not lined up to help do this, because it was AWESOME.

We had about ten people all together, five or six on either side of an enormous battering ram type thing, and a monk says some chanty religious things which no-one was able to really translate properly for me, and then on the signal, you bong the battering ram as hard as you can all together into the gigantic bell and the noise is fun, but the whole building vibrates for about three minutes afterwards which is pretty exciting. Then an abortive attempt to go for a walk on the hillside (poor wild papa Hsiao. The best-laid plans of mice and men, etc. The optimism to realism ratio is very, very high) before heading home and going instead for a walk in the park, which was great because I chased wild niece around the play structures just enough times that I have been (finally) crossed off her long, long list of people too scary to make eye contact with and am now on the cool list: I know I'm in now because she gave me her 1950's movie star sunglasses to wear after dinner.

Lunch at aunt's house again, this time with about twice as many people (group photo was taken, which will get posted eventually, mostly so that I can have another stab at remembering everyone's names), and lots of kids, which meant more finagling of red envelope funds. One prepubescent cousin was targeted as the vehicle for equalization of funds, but the politics involved are really something else: the envelope had to come from Big Kahuna, since he'd not been there the day before and thus had been the only member of the immediate clan not to be able to distribute envelopes, but wild papa and mama H. had to be in the room and standing by so that it was clear the lolly was _actually_ coming from them, and prepubescent cousin's parents also had to be there while the lolly was counted so that _they_ would know that honour was satisfied, and the whole project was made that much more difficult by the fact that prepubescent cousin was very, very slippery & that the meal was being eaten in about four different rooms at once. (The group photo was actually less for the photo than an excuse to get everyone in the same place at the same time so the red envelope could exchange hands in the correct way).

I spent most of the post-meal period playing giant Legos on the floor with baby and cousin and watching a totally absorbing parkour contest on TV in Japanese; wild brother-in-law spent it knocking back shots of Johnnie Walker with elderly uncle and was given a jade chicken at the end of the afternoon, so he's REALLY in now. (I forgot to mention before that elderly uncle was wearing a T-shirt with at Playboy bunny (!) embroidered on the pocket; when I delightedly (but discreetly) pointed it out to babydaddy, he said that the pocket was not in fact original to the shirt but had been specially added, so that elderly uncle would have something to keep his reading glasses in. We don't know the justification for the Playboy bunny logo.

Last stop of the day's outing was to the mall, which is the biggest shopping mall in Kaohsiung or Taiwan or Asia or somewhere; whatever it was, it confirmed for me that I really, really hate shopping malls. I get overwhelmed with the sense that we are doomed as a species by our own crass greedy stupidity whenever I go into one. We tried to take the kids to the "Children's Kingdom" which was a hellhole of loud noises and flashing lights - I am something of a nonbeliever in ADHD as a diagnosis for people, but I might revise my opinion when it comes to environments - but the overall consensus was "too expensive" so mercifully we peeled off and went and wandered around the kids' section of the bookstore instead, where (a) it was quiet (yay) (b) there were lots of books for baby to entertain herself pulling off the shelves without anyone to really mind terribly (yay) and (c) i could sit on the floor and look at kids' books rather than feel yucked out by all the CRAP for sale elsewhere. Even when the clothes are nice, when I see a picture of a gorgeous model having a fabulous time with their friends while wearing a great outfit, it's hard not to think, which would I rather have, the really fun friends, the model's body or the outfit they are wearing? and it's always 1/2 rather than 3, which tends to make you pretty much immune to marketing, for better or, some might argue in my case, for worse :)).

Brilliant insight of the afternoon after cruising the bookshop: the quality of a book for at least very small children is 99% the personality of the illustrations and almost nothing to do with the plot or character.

Back home to watch the Australian Open while eating (yes, again. It keeps happening) pomegranate and pistachio Turkish Delight...

New Years Eve

A very exciting action-packed day today for everyone: it's nearly 11 o'clock at night and I only just put baby to bed (!) yikes...

We went first thing in the morning to the street market (different from the night market: this market is where the Taiwanese ladies go to do their hardcore pre-New Years shopping for meat/fruit/vegetables/rice etc, rather than the night market, which is where you go to buy food on sticks to eat as you comparison shop for your turquoise leopard-skin print polyester matching bra and panty set). It was packed with ladies doing their last minute hard core shopping, and some fairly dramatic items for sale: whole plucked roosters, heads, combs, feet etc intact; a zillion different kinds of fish, many still flopping around on their blocks of ice; carrots the size of my arm; stem ginger so potent it turns your face inside out, etc. There were lots of near misses with death-by-moped, since (a) mopeds are definitely the preferred mode of transport and (b) traffic laws are, like the pirate code, more of a guideline than a rigid set of rules so lots of people weave in and out of the market stalls (mopeds loaded up with groceries, pets, children, etc). The diesel fumes are something else. We had "Chinese breakfast" out, which is sort of a self-serve cafeteria style deal (or, in babydaddy's sweetly wonky translation, a "self-help restaurant," which conjures up images of being served by Eckhart Tolle and Dr. Phil) where you line up with a tray and pick out whatever selection of filled bun/dumpling/fried donutty thing appeals to you, and plonk down at a table; wild brother-in-law and I committed the grave faux pas of sitting down a table that belonged to a neighbouring business, and the shop owner had to ask babydaddy "are the white people with you? and if so, can you tell them they need to move" eesh. oops.

My goal for the morning was to purchase a New Year's banner: a long strip of red paper on which are written your hopes for the New Year. We stopped at plenty of shops selling unbelievably schlocky versions of this (think pre-printed, with bug-eyed cartoon dragons and lots of glitter) but we finally hit a stall where a guy was doing it the old-school way, with a calligraphy brush and ink pot). We didn't have time to wait in line for him to write a special one for me, so we picked out one he'd already done, which (I think) requested wisdom, kindness, self-improvement, and good health for the household, which seemed right on the money. Babydaddy even rubberstamped the posting of it above our doorway in SF for two whole weeks, even though it does have flecks of gold on it...

Then to Lotus Lake, which is to temples what Las Vegas is to casinos: there are a lot of them, and they take them to new and deliciously vulgar heights. There is one temple that is a gigantic dragon that you enter through the mouth, another with a gigantic (like five story high) warrior figure, another one with a megaBuddha perched on the roof, etc. Even some of the older more sedate looking temples have been updated with a digital screen running continuous advertisements for ongoing temple activities, which is sort of sad).

Home for late lunch and nap (me & baby) and out to aunt's house for meal prep and ancestor worship ceremony (babydaddy), after which we took a taxi driven by a heavily pomaded tracksuited taxi driver with a taste in remixed 1970's hits to aunt's house for New Years dinner, where there is so much to describe my head might actually explode. Babydaddy was terribly apologetic about how boring he was worried it was for me, and I was like, are you kidding? I was desperately wanting to take notes so I wouldn't forget anything...

where to begin:

house: 4-5 story multi family compound; essentially one aunt/uncle per floor, plus family. sort of dark dingy entryway with stairs, take your shoes off at the top, change into plastic slippers, go into living room of aunt and uncle's house. Decor can only be described as early 1980s random: textured pink/green streaks on the ceiling, geometric design taupe curtains, digital clock which also showed temperature/barometric pressure/time at the South Pole/lord knows what else because it had a lot of blinking red numbers, enormous display case with reclining nude female statue, Chinese dolls, stuffed animals, cardboard boxes piled up of Pampers, a Vitamix mixer, a telephone which must have been there since 1956, black and white photos of grandma and grandpa, gold plastic cat figurines

furniture: sofa/coffee table/armchairs made out of gnarled wood, vaguely Tolkienesque; dining room table was folding red metal of the kind that we used to have in the cafeteria of public elementary schools, with plastic stools.

food: table overloaded with dishes of clearly complicated food: fish, bamboo shoots, cabbages, sausage, chicken, meatballs, sticky rice balls filled with meat, soup, candies, peanuts, chestnuts, crackers, wine, whiskey for the Men.

people: assorted aunts/uncles, all very friendly, and particularly sweet with baby. one cousin is a forensic ichthyologist (!) whose job it is to figure out whether certain oysters are being illegally imported/exported, and who gave baby a set of "Fish of Eastern Taiwan" playing cards, a kit to make your own coloured sand painting of a graph of ocean depths around Kaohsiung (I think), several fish stickers, and two Taiwanese fish identification tables, which frankly are the coolest presents I think she may have ever been given. Another cousin was introduced as being "he is very shy" and, indeed, he spent the entire time in the kitchen and not talking, as far as I could tell, to anyone. Another cousin gave us a tour of the upstairs, where the ancestor worship ceremony bit had happened earlier in the day: there is a little shrine where you present the food that you are going to eat that night (in babydaddy's words, "so that the ancestors can sort of pick at it first. It's also OK to present it in a not-totally-table-ready form, apparently, as "the ancestors don't necessarily like a lot of sauce." (that's a direct quote).

Then you ask them for any special requests that you have that they might be able to arrange from the afterlife (I wished for good health for my family aaaahhhhh) and you put a little stick of burning incense in a pot in front of the Buddha (their particular family Buddha is the Qin yuang Buddha, who is the Buddha of compassion), and you burn fake money in a metal container to grease the ancestors' palms a bit, although apparently this practice is being replaced by burning a check (!) made out to the ancestors in the interests of reducing smoke-related pollution.

After that we got the tour of the rooftop area, where babydaddy's uncle had apparently kept a whole aviary and built a koi pond and where everyone had played when they were little; it's since been given over to uncle's new passion for growing bonsai trees and collecting tea-related paraphernalia.

Other exciting events: the handing out of red envelopes full of lolly to the kids by the adults. This is fraught with politics, as you have to keep track of who gave who how much last year, everyone has to get the same amount, the kids don't actually get to keep a lot of the cash, since the adults have to redistribute it evenly so that everyone ends up pretty much with the cash they started with. Luckily both baby and toddler cousin were blissfully unaware, and baby was mostly pleased with the red envelopes because they were something she could put into her high chair and take out over and over again.

In other baby news: a coffee-table vs head collision which will give her an impressive black eye by tomorrow, I suspect, but she recovered her sense of humour admirably quickly. She can now say "grandpa" "big sister", and "one two jump" in Chinese; she says voom voom when asked what noise a car makes, and "water" in English (lots of fun playing with the water feature in the courtyard of the apartment building this afternoon), and she has raspberry-blowing contests with her cousin, in which they politely take turns blowing very wet raspberries at each other across their carseats and laughing like maniacs.

Huge impressive fireworks display visible from bed through the window just now! which must mean it's midnight and thus officially the new year. Happy Chinese New Year, everyone, and best wishes for wisdom, kindness, good health, and babies what sleep through the night.

New Years Eve Eve

Observations, in no particular order, about Taiwan:

1. Stickers on appliances advertising the appliance's features tend to be left on. Forever. This is how I know that that bathtub in the flat has a "Power Wow Pump" (don't you want one of those?!?). "Compact Design, Reliable Operation, Whisper Quiet Operation, Lower Amperage Draw, and Amazing Performance".

2. When babydaddy and wild brother-in-law went to buy coffee at Starbucks, the barista asked babydaddy for his surname to write on the cup, so that they could call it out when his order was ready. Babydaddy asked (Caucasian) brother-in-law, hey, how did they manage your surname? to which wild BIL replied, what? they didn't ask me for my surname. Babydaddy looked at BIL's cup, and the barista had written "white guy" in Chinese.

3. Baby's face is open season for anyone with a wiping cloth. (The waiter in the hotel restaurant came up to her twice to wipe her face while eating breakfast two days ago, although there are clearly some etiquette points here, as both times he waited until babydaddy had got up to go and get a coffee refill).

4. "Inside voice" is not really a thing here.

This morning we climbed, as promised, the mountain with mosquitoes and monkeys; I am pleased to report that there were WAY more of the latter than of the former. We hiked up a beautifully maintained trail through banyan trees up to the top of a steepish mountain (I burned off one and a half mochi red bean cakes carrying the baby) where, of course, there was a Taiwanese chiringuito where we had tepid tea. Macaques absolutely everywhere, completely unafraid of humans (presumably because many humans, despite all the posted warnings, were feeding them). They are quite sweet to look at, especially the baby ones, but there were a couple of less sweet moments, one when two monkeys decided to have a teeth-bared screeching fight within two feet of baby; I don't think I have ever moved to pick her up or jumped mentally to fear-of-baby-contracting-rabies so quickly before.

The second was when a boy monkey decided to make sweet tender love to a nearby (completely nonplussed/oblivious) girl monkey; the whole thing lasted about seven seconds, and then after girl monkey wandered off to go rub her bum on some grass, boy monkey decided to eat his own ejaculate eeeeeeuuuuuuwwwwwwww. Anyway. The view from the top of the mountain was great, and like I said, very few mosquitoes. :)

After lunch we left baby in charge of wild mama H. and went out to the shops on a book-buying spree; the plan had been to get some kids' books in Mandarin so that baby has got something to read once she can actually say more than "cat" and "pick me up" in Chinese . Bizarrely, the vast majority of the books in the children's section were actually in English, which either indicates a huge push towards English education, or a vast and invisible expat population with a surge in birth rates about 2-5 years ago. Either way, we found both a book about cats AND a book called "Pick Me Up", so our bases are covered.

Dinner out at a little Vietnamese joint around the corner, then for a Love Boat River tour which sounds a lot, lot sexier than it actually was; a little half hour pootle up the river in a covered tour boat to the harbor with a lumpish twenty-something equipped with a microphone pointing out the scenic attractions of riverside Kaohsiung (I think I liked best the twin apartment buildings with neon diamond rings on top of them, apparently to connote total luxury living)... then home, bath/bed for baby (who was so tired she gave up after only one and a half renditions of "Dos Gardenias Para Ti," and one of "Three Old Ladies Locked in the Lavatory"), a brief and pathetic stab at sketching a glass (doomed, especially when I am this tired), and now to bed. No idea what plan is for tomorrow beyond 'going to see ancestors for New Year and we bring food,' but I will report as faithfully as I can. Love to all....