chinese new years

it was chinese new year on wednesday. on thursday night i went over to my language exchange partner's house (her name is Karen) and had a very nice meal, drank some monstrous liquor, and played cards until after midnight. it was nice to see what taiwanese people do to celebrate. several of the meals had symbolic meanings - fish (very fresh, prepared with ginger and green onions, very tender) represents wealth, boy choy (with garlic, i like it very much) represents long life, and i believe that the pigs feet stew (cooked for 3 days - very tender! and better than it sounds) represented god knows what. another dish, a vegetable and pork stew, could be literally translated as "buddhist monk jumps over the monestary wall because it smells so good," so named because the vegetarian chinese buddhist monks couldn't eat the meat dish. we also had chicken with the head still on, which represented the health of the home, important for karen's two recently married brothers. karen told me that if the head of the chicken points at you (and it inevitably pointed at everyone being as it was on a big lazy susan) it means that you will be fired from your job in the next year. nice to know i have something to look forward to. we drank plum wine that karen's aunt made -very nice- and i had what i believe was sorghum liquor - very strong and a little bit foul. we watched some crappy taiwanese variety shows (think donnie and marie) and some crappy harry potter movie while we played cards (seven star) until it passed midnight. anyway, it was all very interesting and i appreciated the invitation.