Hello, everyone! This is Cheng Ting-Fang, your #techAsia host for this week, sending greetings from Taipei as we kick off the first working week of the lunar Year of the Snake.

If you live in a Mandarin-speaking place like Taiwan or China, the spring festival, which celebrates the lunar new year, is the most important holiday of the year. During this time, families traditionally gather for lavish feasts. When I was a child, our celebration would start in the late afternoon on New Year’s Eve at my grandparents’ home in the countryside. We enjoyed hot pots, marinated beef, slices of abalone, freshly steamed shrimp and fish, mullet roe and dumplings, all with endless servings of fried turnip pancakes and sweet glutinous rice cakes.

Over the years, many families have gradually stopped cooking at home for the spring festival because preparing so many dishes can be overwhelming. Last year, we tried something new and took a trip overseas. However, with US President Donald Trump having just taken office and the likelihood that I would have to work over the holiday, we decided to stay in Taipei this year and dine out. Because we left the decision until just two weeks before New Year’s Eve, I ended up calling around 30 restaurants — including Indian, Japanese, Thai and Italian spots (Chinese and Taiwanese restaurants were definitely full) — until I could find a table. In the end, we settled for a hotel buffet, where we had steak and lobster, along with fries and macaroons served with English breakfast tea and coffee for our New Year’s Eve dinner. My cousins later told me that they had made their reservation at a traditional Taiwanese restaurant in another city as early as October to guarantee a table.