New Year

Chinese New Year

Every Taiwanese regarded Chinese New Year as the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays. The holiday is a good time to celebrate with family and friends and relatives who seldom meet together. The origin of Chinese New Year, is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. According to tales and legends, the beginning of Chinese New Year started with the fight against a mythical beast called “Nien”. Nien would come on the first day of Chinese New Year to devour livestock, crops and villagers, especially children. In order to protect themselves, the villagers would put some food in front of their door at the beginning of every year. They believed that after the Nien ate the food they prepared for it, it wouldn't attack any people. One day, a villager saw that the Nien was scared away by a little boy who was wearing red cloth. The villagers then understood that the Nien was afraid of red. Therefore, every time the New Year was came, the villagers would hang red lanterns and red spring scrolls on windows and doors. People also used firecrackers to frighten away the Nien. From then on, the Nien never came to the village again.

I remember when winter vacation comes, my parents would start to prepare the luggage to go back to my grandfather’s house and the car was always stuffed full of foods. This included my dads refreshing coffee, ham cheese sandwichs with fragrant just like we went into the bakery the aroma smell of bread that were made by my mom, my favorite smooth and full taste chocolate and many cookies because it was a long drive. Not only my family but also every relative went back to my grandfather’s house before Chinese New Year's Eve, because we wanted to eat a lavish reunion dinner and celebrate this holiday with our relatives. My parents and uncles used to take us back to the south of Taiwan when it was a winter vacation. Therefore, we would not encounter traffic a jam and we...