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Published: February 11th 2014
Fireworks!
Kaylee has much better pictures... you should see the videos!Happy year of the horse!! This celebration of the Chinese new year has been quite an adventure! We use that word to describe so many things that happen here, but truly, there isn't a better way to describe our travels than 'an adventure!' We are on holiday and spending it with Jarek's friend Wang Zhen. He is so kind to let us into his apartment to stay for a week and let us participate in all the family traditions. It has been awesome! I have learned so much about the culture here. I will start at the beginning of the festivities:
5:00 Dinner. On 'New Year's Eve' we went out to dinner with Wang Zhen's whole family. His mom, grandma (who is 93!), aunts, uncles and cousins. It was a very fancy restaurant - you know, the kind with the big spinny circle table in the middle where they put all the food. We ate a lot! And then began the toasts. Toasting is a vital part of the Chinese culture, especially during the new year festivities. Everyone, starting from the host then oldest to youngest gets a turn to make a toast. Then everyone just toasts and toasts and
Dinner venue #1toasts for the rest of the meal. "Have a healthy year, make lots of money…etc." And to those who aren't married, "Get married this year." And to those who are married, "Have a baby this year." It is a subtle yet strong way of putting pressure on family members to keep the family looking successful. All while drinking and drinking and drinking! Wang Zhen and Jarek and I enjoyed delicious almond milk for our toasts. Being the foreigners, many toasts were made to us to make us feel welcome and part of the group. It was an entertaining dinner to say the least!
8:00 The TV Show. After drinking too much, the family returned home just in time to watch the Chinese New Year show on TV: a program full of different kinds of acts to bring in the new year. The show has become a part of all the new year traditions in most every family. This year there was lots of dancing where all the dancers wore crazy horse costumes to celebrate the year. After watching a few minutes of that (and avoiding questions about Mao Zedong by one of Wang Zhen's uncles) we went to make
The new train station in Hohhot... yes, blue skies!dumplings! I was really looking forward to this part! They taught us the true Chinese way. I can now open a dumpling shop! Hooray! The only downside of the dumpling making was that we knew we had to eat the dumplings later and we were already sooo stuffed…
11:30 Fireworks. Fireworks. Fireworks. And more fireworks. Really. I have seen and heard more fireworks in the past week than I have in my whole life! There aren't words to describe the excitement, but I will do my best. The noise started before 11. Firecrackers galore! And boy do those things echo in a city with tall buildings! We were on the 5th floor and as we descended the stairs to go outside, the cracks and booms grew with every step. Once we opened the door to the outside, it was as if we were in a war zone. Booms from above, crackling from all around! We went around the corner and got sparklers to start out! In Colorado, all fireworks are illegal, so I felt like a little kid again finally being able to play with sparkling fire! I even got to light a fire cracker! It was terrifying because
Part of the New Year's tradition is for the whole family to pay respects to the family elders, in this case the grandma. She's 93 years old!I had to light it with a cigarette, but it was a thrill! It finally caught fire and Wang Zhen screamed, "RUN!" I booked it! So fun. Then there were the fireworks that shoot up in the sky. Here, they don't quite reach the sky, but they do reach the tops of the buildings! The colors bounce off of every window and cement brick while the echo goes on forever. Once it hit midnight, there were literally fireworks in every direction. Directly above me, before me, behind me, between all the buildings, above some buildings, firecrackers on the ground all over. It was magical… and terrifying! I only got blasted once and Jarek almost got hit in the eye, but we are okay! It was amazing!
12:30 Eat dumplings. We returned inside to eat dumplings. The fireworks had not stopped, and nor were they about to, so we went in to eat the dumplings we made. Because we are the guests, they made us eat most of them! I felt so sick after. We were already full and then stuffed mutton dumplings down one after another. They were delicious, though. We thought we would be able to go home
Aftermath
That is a pile of leftover paper from fireworks, all swept together in a parking lot. How will they clean it up now? Burn it. Even though there's still some latent gunpowder in there... and sleep for a long time and not have to eat again until dinner the next day. Well, we couldn't have been more wrong.
8:00 Eat dumplings again. We went to bed around 2 and got up to go to Wang Zhen's parent's house again for breakfast. This time, there were lucky prizes in the dumplings. There were 10 coins, some peanuts and some sweet hard candies hidden in some of the dumplings. If you ate one with any of those things in it then that means you will be very lucky this year! And if you ate one with a coin that means you will have lots of money! I at one with a sweet candy, two with peanuts, and one with a coin! I will be rich! (Yet somehow, I don't think that little coin-stuffed dumpling can make an unemployed, newly-wed student magically rich…) So we tried not to eat too many dumplings this time around because we woke up full, but the family made us eat and eat and eat. We lost a lot of weight while being here, but it has been found this week without any problems. These are the small blessings we enjoy
Lunch venue #2in life 😉
Sometime that morning. We got to experience the tradition of honoring your elders in China. It is a huge part of Chinese culture to honor those who are older than you. For example, in a family, you never call anyone older than you by their real name, you call them by how they are related to you. In English it would be just 'aunt' or 'grandma' but in Chinese it is much more complicated than that. If you call them by their real name, it is extremely disrespectful. Anyways, on the morning of the new year, everyone bows to their elders. They started with the 93 year old grandma, who is absolutely adorable by the way! Everyone bowed to her and wished her good health and happiness and so on. Then the first son, then second and so on. The elders then give red envelopes with money to the younger ones. The littlest boy who is seven years old ended up with at least 2000 kuai!
11:00 Eat again. Yep. We had to eat again. Two hours later we went out to another fancy restaurant. This time it was spicy food, which is much harder
A refulgent, solemn, and stirrinf photograph.
Taken in the provincial museum's dinosaur exhibit. May it teach you a lesson! to force down than other kinds of food. But everyone was there eating, toasting and drinking. And Jarek and I were there eating, toasting and feeling really sick! But again, it was rather entertaining and the food was free.
1:30 return home to sleep and not eat ever again.
So the following two days we went out to eat again and again. We had a big lunch in the restaurant with the family each day and had a big dinner as well. We have been full for a week! So that makes four consecutive meals out in the fancy restaurants, three meals of dumplings (one was a batch of donkey dumplings, pretty good if I do say so myself), two big dinners, and one great Chinese new year celebration!
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