Happy New Year!

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I’ll take a break from the vacation blogs to make a quick entry on Chinese New Year. In China, Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday of the year. This year it fell on Valentine’s Day. Last year I was in Cambodia during the holiday so I was looking forward to spending it here and with Chinese friends. My friend Michelle invited myself, Kim, and Ian to spend the holiday with her family at her aunt’s home. Saturday, February 13, we all met up at Michelle’s house first then made our way to her aunt’s home. Visiting from out of town were Michelle’s paternal grandmother, her young cousin, and her cousin’s grandparents. There was a big feast at lunch time with beef, fish, lamb, chicken, duck, oysters, shrimp, and many other delicious things. There was another feast at dinner time. Everything was superb, but my stomach was in an uproar. Michelle’s family is from the Hunan province where the food comes in hot, super spicy, and atomically spicy.

There’s a five hour variety program that apparently comes on every year for the holiday and everyone watches it. The music and dance numbers were fun, but the comedy sketches were completely lost on us foreigners. The ‘grown-ups’ busied themselves with some sort of gambling card game all afternoon and into the early hours of the morning. The rest of us watched tv, movies, and played with the Wii. Several people in the estate were setting off fireworks below and we watched them from the balcony. Well, we watched them from inside the doors to the balcony as there were sparks flying everywhere. That night I shared a room with Kim, Michelle, and Michelle’s grandmother. I knew Michelle and her dad both snore like champs, but I learned that night and their log-sawing was nothing compared to Grandma’s. I also managed to walk in on Grandpa on the squatter not once but twice. I feel completely absolved of these potty interruptions as I knocked both times, called out both times, and both times he did not lock the door. The next day we got up late, had another chili infused feast then I went home to sink into a pepto infused nap.

My company was shut down for eight days so the rest of my week was filled with dinners, breakfasts, and various other visits with friends and ‘family’ that I have here in Shenzhen. On Friday several of us met up at Partyworld. In all the time I have lived in China I had not yet experienced the popular past time of karaoke. But karaoke is not the parade of public humiliation it is in the States. Here you rent a private room and humiliate yourself only in front of your nearest and dearest. We even had our own bathroom. It was pretty swank. And for three hours for six of us it only cost about $10 each.

A note about fireworks and Chinese New Year: The first night they were pretty. The second night they were still pretty. The third night and every night after that, when they’d start blowing up around midnight and continue until four in the morning I started internally referring to them as the f---ing fireworks. Hopefully the population has exhausted their supply. I have to go back to work on Sunday and I’d like to get some sleep.

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Photos

What every home should have...
...meat hanging in the foyer

From left to right
Michelle, her dad, mom, uncle, and cousin (whom we named Piper)

More gambling
It went on forever!

Mmmm.....
so many spicy things....