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Published: February 3rd 2014
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We are so lucky that our friend Emily invited us to her family home to celebrate Spring Festival. Better known as Chinese New Year, Spring Festival is actually a celebration of the lunar new year and is celebrated for 15 days in many Asian countries. The holiday is basically like having all of China throw a family reunion - at the same time. In China, the Spring Festival travel rush, known as
chunyun, is probably the worlds biggest seasonal human migration. Shannon and I made the 1000km trip north from Beijing to our friend's village, near Changchun, by train. Though we paid for seats, many of the other passengers stood or sat on the floor for the crowded seven hour trip. The countryside we saw was somewhat unremarkable, made up mostly expansive corn fields dotted with small cities and villages, but after 4 hours on the 200km/hr train we finally saw snow.
We arrived in Changchun almost an hour late, at 2:30 in the afternoon. Our friend Emily and her cousin were waiting for us. We loaded our things into his beat up van and drove another hour north to Emily's family home in Shanxi(not the province). Arriving in Emily's
village was probably our first glimpse of the real China, until then we had visited predominantly urban areas and tourist destinations. In contrast, we were perhaps the first foreigners to ever see this small village of brick and concrete houses huddled together and surrounded by snow covered corn fields. We entered the house through a brick courtyard where chickens and ducks pecked at the dry ground and a friendly dog was chained in the corner.
Inside Emily's parents and 2 brothers were waiting. At first, all but her older brother, who spoke English, were very shy. They showed us to our room (Emily's room), one of the four rooms in the house. In three rooms of these there is a very special bed call a
kang, the bed is made of brick and tile and is heated by the fire place/cooking stove in the central kitchen. Wood, corn stalks and cobs are fed into the fire from the kitchen and are used both to cook food and keep the house and beds very warm. Shannon and I both loved sleeping on the
kang, the hard surface was covered by a thick blanket which made it comfortable and very warm.
Emily explained that her mom had given us a red blanket because she knew we were newly married and a red blanket is lucky for newly weds.
After getting settled we ate dinner with Emily's family. During Spring Festival, before dinner it is customary to set off fire crackers and bottle rockets, in order to scare away
Nian, a legendary half dragon and half lion monster that that reportedly comes out of hiding during the lunar new year. Then it was time to eat, they prepared so much food for us: rice(
mifan), chicken(
jirou), fish(
yurou), pork(
zhurou), vegetables and my favorite donkey(
lurou). The food was all prepared by Emily and her parents and was all local and very wholesome. Emily's father and brother encouraged me to drink lots of beer(
pijiu). After dinner we made all made traditional dumplings call
jiaozi. Emily's mother threw us clumps of dough that we rolled into balls and gave to Emily's father who rolled them flat with a rolling pin. Then we filled the little pancakes with fillings made of pork or vegetables. We ate these dumplings later, as we watched the CCTV Spring Gala on TV.
The next day we woke up early and
The Buddhist Temple
Shannon and Emily next to a guardian elephant. again were served a fantastic meal of eggs and leftovers from the last nights dinner. After breakfast we walked to a nearby town to visit a Buddhist Temple. Because it was the first day of the new year there were lots of people visiting the temple to pray for luck, health and good fortune. In the temple courtyard enormous sticks of incense burned in large troughs outside of the many temple buildings. Emily told us that taking pictures inside the temples would bring us bad luck, but we could take pictures outside. I really wish we could have photographed the statues and traditional artwork in the temples, but who needs bad luck? After visiting the temple we walked a little further into town to a small grocery store to buy tomatoes and broccoli. Shannon and I were certainly a strange sight to the locals; most just stared, slack jawed, as we passed.
When we arrived back at Emily's home, her father's best friend, who she calls her uncle, was working in the kitchen to prepare our first dinner of the new year. Again we set off fireworks before eating a very large and nourishing dinner of
jiaozi, assorted meats,
vegetables and eggs, and of course more
pijiu(beer). Emily told us that her parents were concerned that we might be uncomfortable using chopsticks(
kuaizi), we said no and asked why they thought this, the response is that we used them "maybe like children." Emily's uncle was not shy at all and throughout dinner he told us (through Emily) how happy he was to meet us and how important friendship is. After dinner uncle went home and Shannon and I rested on our
kang. Later we had another smaller meal of freshly made noodles and dumplings.
Our last morning, we again woke early and had a big breakfast of eggs,
jiaozi, steamed buns (
baozi) and leftover from dinner. We took the dog for a long walk through the fields, accompanied by Emily's brother who told us about how much the land had changed since he was a kid. "There used to be animals here," he said "I could catch fish in the stream and see animals when I played with my brother." We ate one more delicious meal with Emily's family before getting ready to leave. Later her mothers family arrived and another cousin drove us back to the train station.
Most holiday travelers stay with their families for a few more days so the train was not crowded. We returned home to Beijing on an overnight train, this time in a sleeper car and were fortunate to not have to share our 6 bunk room.
The Spring festival is definitely an amazing time of year in China, think Thanksgiving+Christmas+New Years+Fourth of July all rolled into one - even now I can hear fireworks are being set off outside our building. Shannon and I are so happy we got to spend our first Chinese New Year with our friend Emily and her family. The trip certainly reminded us of our family holidays at home.
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Kelly
non-member comment
Chinese New Year
Wow! You're getting to experience the real deal! Love these blogs! And the pictures! Happy New Year!