I am sorting out my thoughts about the trip...

I visited very briefly with my cousin Cong-hui who came to America to study English a couple of years ago. At that time, she was desperately unhappy and proclaimed that she would like to be reborn in the next life as a man. Because in her mind, men have more opportunities, more power. From a Buddhist perspective, to want to be reborn at all is heartbreaking. Anyways, a few months ago, one of her friends arranged a love match for Cong-hui and she is getting formally engaged next month and married in March to a man who is neither tall nor who drives a fancy car (her previous criteria for a match). She says it was "about time" - meaning mostly that she'd been advised by 3rd Uncle to find somebody and get out of the house.

The engagement is a formal, traditional affair in which the parents of each person meets each other. The groom brings special cookies to the parents of his bride which they can then distribute to friends and family thus announcing the happy news. I saw one of these cookies on my first trip to Taiwan five years ago. I was driving around with my cousin Yi Heng and he had a cigar shaped wafer cookie on the dashboard of his car. A girl he had once loved sent it to him - her way of letting him know that nothing more was possible. How sad my cousin was! 5 years later, he is living in Taipei, with his new girlfriend, a distincly untraditional thing to do in the Taiwanese culture. 4th Uncle and his wife visited them in the city and asked about their intentions and arranged a visit to her parents house. So forward-thinking...