My posts have slowed down a bit because of Chinese New Year aka the Spring Festival which, rereading this post, I didn't actually write much about. Even though I was actually quite busy most of the day eating, drinking, visiting relatives of my friend, and lighting fireworks Chinese New Year in China is a hard experance to describe. While I can tell you that I ate four large meals, started drinking at noon, tried not to blow my hand off with cheap Chinese fireworks, and watched the CCTV New Year's Gala, it loses something in translation. What I can say is it is a rather crazy holiday, if you wanted to you could do Spring Festival from dawn till dusk. During Spring Festival it seems like every old Chinese lady in the country is in a constant state of cooking and every old Chinese man is giving the foreigner some of his special medicinal corn whiskey out of a terribly large plastic bottle. I can confirm, the food is on point. Interestingly enough, I think many of the dishes are made to be recycled into new dishes. Pig's foot noodles breakfast becomes a protein at the major lunch meal which becomes a soup base for late night dumplings. My friend's father-in-law was especially proud of the wild mountain bees served fried with chillies, apparently they are both expressly expensive and rare. They tasted pretty good actually. One of the major activities is visiting other people's, mainly relatives, houses, all of which serve more food and alcohol. While the food can be refused, your new host will fight you to stay and eat. I ended up eating a second lunch because my friend's brother-in-law put the food out on the table before we could say no. The most iconic image of Chinese New Year is the fireworks, legal without a permit only on the New Year's holiday. They are fun but it is important to note that the fuses are so short they might as well not exist and not all fireworks actually work well. We got a few duds in our batch, this is something you just have to live with. The fireworks are also constant, it is as close as I ever want to come to becoming a resident of Aleppo. Overall I enjoyed my first real Chinese New Year, even with the craziness.
2 Comments
Dad
1/29/2017 02:20:39 am
Sounds like great fun
Reply
sharon
1/29/2017 04:05:03 am
now i am curious about music all around - do they play music in there homes? do they have any pop music or foreign imports?
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
November 2021
Categories
All
|