Traditions of Taiwan

Chinese New Year

Spring festival, also called the Chinese New Year is the grandest festival for all Chinese. It celebrates the birth of the New Year, a time for renewed hopes, coming of spring and fresh crops. Prior to the New year eve, businesses and individuals would settle all accounts as it is considered bad luck to have debs due when New Year arrives. Employees expects to receive New Year bonus of minimum one month extra salary.

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Dragon Dance on the streets

Families would gather for a sumptuous reunion dinner at home. Taiwan’s temples are usually very busy during the New Year as people crowd into them with large incense sticks praying for good luck. Some major temples close their main gates before midnight on Lunar New Year’s Eve as the noisy and eager crowd gather outside. At the stroke of midnight, the doors are thrown wide open and people surge forward to be the first to place their incense sticks into the urn. The long-standing tradition states that the first person to do so will be blessed with good luck throughout the coming year.

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The joss sticks mad rush during chinese new year

Midnight of New Year eve, firecrackers can be heard throughout the city till about 3am as the noise is designed to welcome the New Year and scare the evil away. One of the most spectacular sights during the Lunar New Year Festival is the dragon and lion dance. The heads of these formidable creatures are supposed to ward off evil, and the agile action of the dancers provides a grand display. Unmarried children would receive red packets when visiting relative’s houses. Mandarin oranges that symbolizes gold should be brought during visitation of friends and family houses, to be consumed by merrymakers during the 24-hour snacking that takes place.

Wedding

Traditional weddings in Taiwan with the influences of the Chinese are the joining of the bride and the groom of different surnames and coming from different villages. They are usually arranged by their family and the ideal prospective wife is physically strong enough for successful childbearing and skilled in the domestic arts whereas ideal prospective husband is from a family with good economic condition. It then includes the presentation of betrothal gifts, sitting in a bridal sedan chair, worshipping Heaven and Earth, bowing to parents and to each other, and teasing the newlywed in the wedding night.

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The wedding ceremony of the indigenous people has rich unique essences just like other tribes. Special wedding customs include weeping at wedding, marriage by abduction, swinging before marriage of the Paiwan people, the groom escaping from the marriage of Amis people, and planting a pine tree at the wedding day of Saisiat people.

Funeral

Taiwan is home to a variety of funeral practices such as Confucianism, Taoism, folk beliefs, Buddhism, and Christianity. Traditional funerals are held in elaborate tents at the roadside. In a funeral, crying lets the deceased know that they are well loved and the showier the ceremony the more respect given to the dead that they even hire brass band and professional mourners. Modern people bottle their emotion more so they are unable to cry out loud so they invite professional mourners to honour the dead by crying their hearts out. Professional mourning is a dying art started from the puppet theatre where there was a character, a filial daughter who wailed at her father’s grave.

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I have always heard from others that people were actually hired to cry at an funeral and I could not really imagine it till I watched it on ChannelNewsAsia and I managed to find the clip about it.

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The funeral marching band where their main motive is to make noise, so the music quality is often not of qualified band standards

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