Lunar Vlog Years

6 min readMar 9, 2021

If you grew up watching YouTube then you may be familiar with the term Vlogmas. If not, it is the combination of Video Blog & Christmas! It is very popular amongst YouTubers to participate in. I believe one of the first Vlogmas’ I watched was from Zoella or Tanya Burr, famous UK YouTube success stories. Eventually it blew up and YouTubers all over the place started doing it! For example in the USA, Asian American YouTuber, Jenn Im did her take on the series, creatively called: Jenngle Bells! But there’s so far not to my awareness, a similar tag series for Chinese New Years or Lunar New Years! That is until last year when I started one in Taiwan with a few of my friends.

Here’s last year’s Lunar Vlog Year’s playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLV7NuPJBkUdb7qRKks0AlV__C9uQkcst3

Last year as you can tell, I was going for a long format documentation style of video blog posting. This year, for the Year of the Ox, I decided to attempt a shorter format video blog style. For me, since I edit my own videos, I feel more challenged when it comes to short format editing. But I don’t mind a challenge, it keeps life interesting.

The color scheme this year is much different from last years. Last year, I used more metallic and textured elements, relying a lot on www.FreePik.com (I’m a Premium Member). This year I’m keeping my branding on point using my X_X style of lettering and illustrating. Let me know what your thoughts are about this upgrade.

Episode 01 — Ox Year | Vegan Dining At The Regent Taipei

For Lunar Vlog Years, here in Taiwan, I spend 除夕 “ChuXi” (New Year Eve) with my maternal side of the family. My mom has three older brothers, and so it’s always a fun family affair. For the past few years, The Regent Taipei has been our family’s go-to spot for 年夜飯 NianYeFan (New Year Dinner). This year we experienced their Silks Club in-room dining service and I special requested my meal to be Vegan. I am so thankful that they were able to accommodate my special food choice, and wanted to share with people that being Vegan doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy special holidays.

Episode 02 — Ox Year | Old Pottery Town Visit

As a sort of staycation / a way to keep this year’s series interesting, my friend Jack and I went to YingGe District to check out the Old Street there and experiment with pottery making. Perhaps its not exactly a Lunar New Year festivity, but I just take pride in showing off the cool places that exist in Taiwan.

I was really behind on video making for Lunar Vlog Years, but to get a video up on time, I decided to sit down and just chat with the camera about some current affairs as well as share what my plans for this year was. I purposely made my twenty-twenty-one year begin at the dawn of the Ox Year, because in a way it shows that I’m proud of my heritage and respect the existence of the Lunar Calendar. I believe the best way to stop racism, other than not being an asshole, is to be proud of your own heritage, that way when people aren’t so nice to you for racial reasons, you’re less affected.

Episode 03 — Ox Year | #StopAsianHate + Updates

Before I went Vegan, I had dabbled at posting content on YouTube and I had done a video taking everyone to Keelung Night Market and it got 1.6K views so far. You can watch that but I’m now Vegan, so I no longer eat those things! Anyways, I wanted Lunar Vlog Years to be interesting, so I made plans with my mom to go to Keelung Night Market and pick up Rice Balls that I thought could be made Vegan and wanted to share the infamous hole in the wall spot with everyone. Unfortunately it was raining, half the stalls weren’t out, and the Rice Balls are NOT Vegan Friendly what-so-ever, but it still made for an interesting video and bonding time with my mom so c’est la vie!

Episode 04 — Ox Year | Vegan Rice Balls / Keelung Night Market

Before I went Vegan, I had dabbled at posting content on YouTube and I had done a video taking everyone to Keelung Night Market and it got 1.6K views so far. You can watch that here but I’m now Vegan, so I no longer eat those things! Anyways, I wanted Lunar Vlog Years to be interesting, so I made plans with my mom to go to Keelung Night Market and pick up Rice Balls that I thought could be made Vegan and wanted to share the infamous hole in the wall spot with everyone. Unfortunately it was raining, half the stalls weren’t out, and the Rice Balls are NOT Vegan Friendly what-so-ever, but it still made for an interesting video and bonding time with my mom so c’est la vie!

Episode 05 — Ox Year | Vegan Friendly Chinese Holiday Food

This last video took a lot of time for me to make. Not the actual process, but I definitely procrastinated a bit before editing & uploading it. The reason was because I got a really great opportunity to attend as a vendor, No Meat Festival 4.0 in Hualien, and therefore my simple plans of doing Lunar Vlog Years got interrupted with other tasks.

But better late than never I’ll say! It was really important to me to do 5 episodes total again this year. I realize that the content quality of Lunar Vlog Years is more casual, but for me that’s how Vlogmas is too? I just felt that it is something I want to be persistent about, despite how tired and lazy I felt. To me, this series is about sharing my heritage and my real-world experience with the internet and it doesn’t matter to me whether or not its the best content ever, what matters to me is that I do it and keep on doing it.

Being of Chinese Descent is a huge part of who I am but I’m also American and Taiwanese, both of which brings me a more dynamic cultural background, but it also means that parts of my heritage has been lost in translation. However food is a huge player in helping people lost in the Chinese Diaspora to gain back a bit of who we are, therefore this last episode was something I was really excited to get a chance to film.

Thank you so much to everyone who took the time to participate in Lunar Vlog Years with me. It really is a meaningful series to me and therefore I really appreciate anyone who supports me by liking, commenting, sharing, and subscribing to my YouTube. As promised in Episode 3, there will be a lot of fun content coming to Shannily’s YouTube Channel, but I’m so thrilled to have completed another year of Lunar Vlog Years. I’m so blessed for your support.

A huge GONG XI FA CAI to you! If you don’t know what 恭喜發財means, then you should check out Ronny Chieng’s stand up comedy special and then you’ll get it!!

This seriously cracks me up every time I watch it. He’s one of my favorite Asian comedians to pop up over the last few years and I can’t wait to see what else he gets into! If Crazy Rich Asians trilogy sticks closely to the book plot, I’m so excited for the third movie, where he plays a bigger part as one of the many antagonists in Kevin Kwan’s book. SO YES! Hope you get rich!!!!!!