...."Fireworks and Idols: New Years Eve in Taiwan 2009
One of the main reasons I decided to leave Australia in the 4th quarter of 2009 and head to Taiwan was to experience both Christmas and New Years abroad.
Having had somewhat of a non-event of a Christmas due to it not being a public holiday and life carrying on as normal, I was relieved to find out that New Years is actually celebrated here.
Sure it’s not as enthusiastic as the 10 day celebrations of the Chinese New Year, but it still left me with a concrete sense of moving into 2010.
I pretty much had two options for New Years Eve. The first was to hang out in one of the foreigner orientated bars in West Taichung or try and mingle with the locals down at the government funded concert.
With an invitation already extended to me the week before I opted for the local experience.
We hit the streets of Taichung on a scooter and made our way down to the concert. I’m not sure what it was called (probably the literal Chinese translation for ‘New Years Eve concert’) but it was situated right next to one of Taichung’s night markets (the name of which also escapes me).
The concert itself was held in a big stadium type building. We got there at around 11pm by which time there wasn’t any way we were getting in. Like they do in Sydney, people had been staking out their seating claims well into the afternoon prior.
Outside the stadium though there was a big television display for us to watch the concert going on inside. The street was a sea of people but was surprisingly quiet. Most people had their eyes fixed to the television.
About twenty minutes till midnight saw people start to climb on top of local news vans for a better vantage point. I’m pretty sure they were just randoms so it was amusing to watch them get around being statistically short.
I have no idea where the tv crews were but nobody seemed too bothered about them sitting on the van roofs.
The concert was naturally in Mandarin so I didn’t really have any idea what was going on until the countdown. Balloons seem to be pretty big here on New Years and as we hit 0 a giant see of them were released by the crowd. Looking up there was at least a few hundred of them floating away into the night.
I gave the girl I was with a peck on the cheek but noticed that, at least in my immediate vicinity nobody else really did anything. There was lots of holding hands going on but the New Years Eve kiss seems pretty non existent.
I kind of became a bit self conscious after that. Thus far I hadn’t seen even one other foreigner at the event and being amongst a massive sea of locals meant the staring at me was a bit more intense then usual.
The fireworks were no Sydney (although they probably beat Melbourne’s poor display) but were nice enough to look at.
With the taboo effect of them being illegal in Melbourne I’m always drawn to firework displays like a moth to a flame.
The good news is that here they are readily available so not only did the stadium fireworks go off but also several other presumable private displays too. Some of which went on and off for the better part of an hour after midnight.
After the stadium fireworks finished the stampede to vacate the street begun with everybody turning around in unison and shuffling back towards the night market.
Along the walk back was a little area to the side where tons of people were waiting around to catch a glimpse of some singer who’d just released a new album or something.
After doing a bit of research it turns out it was some girl called Rainie Yang. Rainie was pimping her new album Rainie and Love…? which was being released on New Years Day.
I was aware of the j-pop idol culture in Japan before I arrived in Taiwan but it seems it’s far from just a Japanese cultural thing. Idols seem to be pretty widespread here as well. So far I’ve seen two or three ‘events’ where mostly girls queue up for miles just to see some guy.
At this particular event a guy in a rainbow colored Hawiaan shirt would come out, say a bunch of stuff in Mandarin for 10-15 minutes or so (mentioning the album name a few times in English) and then disappear while they played a few tracks from the album.
This went on for about forty minutes before Rainie came out and did some singing. I had no idea what the host guy was saying but the sea of mobile phones that went up just moments before Rainie came out was a dead give away.
Normally I’d get bored by this kind of thing in about thirty seconds but being with a girly girl meant not only did I have to answer ‘do you think she’s pretty? I think she’s pretty!’ every five minutes or so but also that we just had to stay until Rainie came out.
…and then listen to her singing her songs.
Luckily for me there was a pretty decent fireworks display going on across the street opposite from where we were waiting. I did feel a bit like a dick occupying prime real estate in the idol viewing area and then facing backwards from everyone else.
Sure I was 10-15 meters away from someone people had been waiting hours to see but it just didn’t do anything for me. Sure she was kind of hot (admittedly the Wikipedia article photo is pretty bad though), but I just couldn’t carry the fanaticism the audience seemed to have with her.
That and she was wearing MC Hammer parachute pants (no I’m not kidding…).
Afterwards we walked around the night market a bit which was fun. Normally they’d close around midnight but with an army of young locals running around business was good enough to remain open.
I’m glad I made the choice to leave a bit earlier and experience New Years elsewhere this year. Although the concept was the same (countdown + fireworks) I was happy that I’d opted to get out there and mix it with the locals.
Taiwan’s been pretty good to me so far and I can’t wait to see what 2010 brings.
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