"You Can't Bye-Bye With A Buddha Head" 拜拜雙意

Happy Chinese New Year!

Welcome to the Year of the Dragon!

We went from the rabbit to the dragon in one fell swoop. (One wonders what became of the rabbit!)

This is our first Chinese New Year in Taiwan. It's all new to Mark. For Ping, it's pretty much the first Chinese New Year as an adult in Asia, so in some ways it's all new to her, too.



One of the main rituals around Chinese New Year is the "Baibai" 拜拜 (pronounced "bye-bye"). Here's a brief definition, according to About.com:

The practice of offering incense, with a bow, to the Taoist altar is called Baibai. As the incense burns, smoke rises, and ashes fall. The ashes represent impure air that sinks; the smoke, pure air that rises. So the offering represents the separation of pure from impure - the refinement and purification of internal energies. It also symbolizes the human body as being the meeting-place of Heaven and Earth: as the smoke rises, and the ashes fall, we make a connection with both earth and sky.

From our experience here, it's more about honoring the ancestors: those who came before us, and without whom we would not be here. Baba (Ping's dad) comes to Beitou and does the Baibai faithfully every week at the official family home which is just around the corner from us.

On Lunar New Year's Eve Day, we got a call from Mama saying, briefly, "come on up." So off we went. Baba was upstairs where they have an altar, doing the usual stuff. We chatted with Mama for a little bit. Then, when Baba came down, he lit sticks of incense and gave us each three of them. Usually, Ping says, the Baibai is done once first thing in the morning, then again at noon, and then again at midnight--one honoring the sky, another the earth, and another the ancestors. With the three sticks of incense, we were doing sort of a Power Baibai, efficiently covering all bases in one shot.
We faced the open door and did the bowing while Baba said a prayer.

Once that was done, we (well, Ping, actually) chatted with the folks some more, Then came the Fruit Packing Time.

Fruit packing, indeed! Baba and Mama had a whole case full of a wide variety of fruit for the New Year's Baibai. This is like an "offering," but it's not really sacrificial. The tradition is to just spread the wealth when you're done with the ritual. We were sent home with several heavy bags of fruit, filled to almost bursting.

If you ever want evidence of abundance, come to Taiwan and look at the fruit! This picture is the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The vast majority is densely packed into our small refrigerator.

These are the ones we're allowing to ripen outside the cold storage: kiwis, nectarines, fingerling bananas (which we used to call "deditos" in Ecuador--very substantial and sweet), and the Buddha Head.

We also have HUGE red apples, MASSIVE pears, KILOS of tangerines, dates and wax apples 蓮霧 (pronounced "lyen-OOH." We think "wax apple" is a lousy name for a yummy and succulent fruit!).

Those green "apples" back there? Those are the dates! They're some of the best hiking food ever: they don't bruise easily and they're sweet, crisp and juicy to eat.

But we learned something important, too. Apparently, one of these fruits does not qualify for the Baibai. We were informed that "You can't Baibai with the Buddha Head!"

Why not?

Because it's the Buddha's Head!!

(Oh! Of course! Wait...what?)

No matter. The good news is that even though you can't Baibai with the Budda Head, you can happily eat the Buddha Head!

Later that day, we went to a restaurant and had "Buddha Jumped Over The Fence." 佛跳牆 With all this fruit and good food, we're feeling a little Buddha-like ourselves, as you can see in this recent picture of Mark.

Happy Lunar New Year to all of you!  --Mark and Ping