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Published: February 18th 2007
Yep, it's Chinese New Year and it's the year of the pig, which means nowt to me as I'm a dog according to their calendar...
I flew into Chengdu last night from Dhaka, and saw the fireworks over Kunming and Chengdu as I flew which was lovely. As soon as I arrived I hopped into a taxi and went to my friend Steven's house where he was having a little gathering to celebrate the New Year, which consisted of eating lots of yummy food, watching god-awful Chinese telly (got to be done), lighting firecrackers, sparklers, watching the fireworks and trying our hand(s) at mahjong. I have known how to play mahjong since I can remember as apparently my great-grandmother learnt, and so my dad taught me and my siblings. However I soon came to realise that this did not stand me in particularly good stead as here in Sichuan they play it differently, and even have different tiles! I am used to playing with white, red and green dragons, as well as with season tiles, winds, and picking a wind at the beginning of the game, plus here they do not play with 'hidden' 'pengs' or 'kongs' which always was
useful for extra points. However they do not have that here, just circles, bamboo and character tiles, so it moves much quicker and is very confusing to me as I am having to un-learn what I have learnt! Grr. However I am intending to go round to Steven's and practice some more! (Apologies to those of you who have no idea what I am talking about...go learn mahjong, ok!)
Today we had a long lie-in, which was lucky because nothing is open here, and will not be for the next few days. Our little suburb - if you could call it that - is dead, like a ghost town, but the centre of town is PACKED with people, and so are certain other cultural areas. We went to Jinli, which was an ancient street, and now is a restored ancient street (!). That was the busiest I had ever seen it, but very pretty with lanterns all around and hanging from every rooftop. Today is apparently the Lantern Festival, so everywhere you look are the traditional red and gold lanterns, as well as multi-coloured ones. The flowers are all in bloom too, pink and red, which are also very
pretty. We had a wander round and a bite to eat and then left to go, with our friend Steven again, to the Lantern Festival park itself.
It was very Chinese in that there were tons of sparkly lights, tacky sculptures and fibreglass animals and insects and just general plastic garish monstrosities, but it's so Chinese I can't help but like it! You'd get it if you lived here! We of course heard the usual whisperings of 'laowai' everywhere we went but what can you do. I just give them a dirty look!
So I have really enjoyed Chinese New Year and it's still only the start of it....
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Samuel
non-member comment
It's a really good test book for me to learn how to introduce Mahjong to others in English. And u see,there are hundreds of ways to play MJ. I know the way u talked about. We call it "international Mahjong". And the one we play in Chengdu,is much easier for beginners.