But as Chinese New Year approached, I began to wonder how wonderful this break would really be. Many of my friends had travel plans, either for vacation or with ISC's high school service trip to the Philippines, and I had been reminded time and time again to stockpile bread and milk so that I wouldn't go hungry when the restaurants and grocery stores closed or failed to restock. It's cold, it's polluted, most of my friends are gone, and everything will be closed.
Though I was happy for the chance to get ahead on lesson plans and to catch up on e-mails and blog posts, I think it is safe to say that no one wants to spend two weeks doing that. In the days leading up to break, I began to seriously regret not making plans to travel out of China. It's possible that I even checked flight prices multiple times in serious consideration of making an impromptu trip back to Madrid...
But I remembered, "Everyone has to stay in China and experience Chinese New Year at least once...." Accounts of the Armageddon-like fireworks and money-burning seemed fictitious and I figured I should indeed stick it out and witness Chinese New Year first hand.
The first night of break the fireworks began to go off and I thought, Ooooookay. I've heard them. Now I have to experience 16 more days of this to say I've really experienced it? Saturday I did a deep cleaning of the apartment and was reaffirmed by my roommate, "You know, this is when Chinese people do spring cleaning. You're right on schedule!." Fireworks, check. Spring cleaning, check. Monday I biked down the street and saw individuals setting yellow pieces of paper aflame and I reckoned that I could scratch that one of the list too. I studied some Chinese at a coffee shop and then returned to my apartment by way of the muffin man, only to find the window closed up. Can't buy food because stores are closed for the holidays... check that one off. Tuesday I struggled to enter my apartment because a few teenage boys were shooting off fireworks alone right in front of the entrance to my apartment. When they switched to sparklers I hurried past them, noticing gratefully for the first time that my doorman had a collection of eight fire extinguishers next to the front door for easy access.
By Tuesday night, I was over Chun Jie. I experienced all of the inconveniences of the holiday and I wasn't excited about 12 more days of the same.
Thankfully, Wednesday greeted me with incredibly blue skies and brisk air and even though I had nothing planned for the day, the world felt like a good place to be. My roommate, Irina, and I meandered for 40 minutes to a nearby fabric market only to find it closed, but contentedly settled for a leisurely cup of coffee at the Starbucks next door. As I was sipping on my coffee, I got a text from Jake that turned my day of nothing into the day that made these two weeks, no matter how boring the rest of the days seem, worth having spent in Shenyang.
Back in mid-December, when I had taught my Chinese friend to make Christmas cookies, she had mentioned that maybe I could come over to her house for Chinese New Year. She mentioned it a few times after that, but never gave a plan or a time to make it feel like it would truly become a reality. But reality it was.
Here are a few highlights of Wednesday evening, Chinese New Year's Eve...
When we first arrived, we sat down on the couch and snacked on the typical Shenyang candies, nuts, and juzi (smaller than clementine nuggets of vitamin C deliciousness). I contributed some chocolate chip cookies for the waiguoren touch.
中国 (Chinese) snacks
My hosts then gifted me with a stuffed goat to celebrate the incoming year of the goat
I showed a lot of self-restraint for the first hour or so as I refrained from pulling out my giant camera to take pictures of the festivities. Of course, I didn't want to embarrass Nancy or draw any extra attention to myself (Wait... is that even possible?). But when aunts and uncles started taking pictures of the dinner table, I figured I had nothing to lose. The Rebel XS made its debut and stayed the rest of the night... and none of them even seemed surprised that I felt the need to document the entire evening.
Dinner is served
Nancy has been taking classes in tea history and tea etiquette, so after dinner she served us a 4-year old black tea and showed off her tea making and serving skills. Tea is like wine in that it can improve with age and that older tea is more expensive, so it was very kind of them to share such nice tea with us.
Getting the cups hot before pouring the tea into them
Pouring the tea
Nancy's grandfather was adorable. He continued to surprise and impress us with his knowledge of English, constant kindness in offering us food and beverages, and his accordion abilities. He could have entertained us all evening and we were mutually appreciative of each other's presence that evening. After dinner he had Jake, Rico, and I sign our names in his diary next to the description of the day that he made two American friends and a German friend.
Make sure you spell your name right, Strother!
Most likely playing Jingle Bells for the fifth time... :)
After dinner and tea, it was time to make jiaozi (dumplings). We rolled out the dough - gan, zhuan, gan, zhuan (roll, rotate, roll, rotate) - stuffed the wrappers with either pork and leek or shrimp and cabbage, and methodically pinched the dumpling wrappers closed - yi, er, san, yi, er, san (one, two, three, one, two, three). It took us a while to get the method down, but as the evening went on, we became quite the pros. Nancy's grandfather suggested we open a jiaozi restaurant stateside when we go back.
Proud of my finished product
Looking good, if I do say so myself!
After we finished the jiaozi, which we would eat just before midnight, we headed outside to participate in one of Chinese people's favorite Chun Jie hobbies: setting off fireworks.
This was one of many that was set off just across the courtyard... so much for safety precautions.
The fireworks are not just for looks, but are a tradition deeply rooted in a Chinese legend about a monster named Nian (Year). You can read about the legend here, but the gist is that an old man scared off the monster using fireworks and red paper around the door (uhhhh, Passover?). "It turned out that the red color, flame and exploding were what Year
feared the most. And when the door of the grandmother's house was thrown
open and an old man in a red robe burst out laughing in the courtyard,
the monster of Year was scared our of his wits and fled helter-skelter... red paper, red cloth, red candles and the exploding firecracker were
certainly the magic weapons to drive out the monster...." Thus, not all of the fireworks sparkle. A lot of them just make extremely loud noises that scared the crap out of the unprepared waigouren (foreigners) walking by.
We almost walked into this one on our way out to the street
The last part of our Chinese New Year Eve celebration, besides eating jioazi, was to head out to the street for Nancy's family to burn jinzhi (ghost money) for their ancestors. Stands all around the city had been selling stacks of gold rice paper embossed with emblems of ancient money, which Chinese buy and burn to send to their ancestors. I was curious about the tradition, so I asked Nancy if her family really believed in it. She said no; they do it as a family as part of the holiday traditions, but not everyone even deemed it something worth leaving the warm house for. Some stayed back to continue watching the special New Year's program or to boil the jiaozi that we would soon be eating for our second meal of the evening.
Burning money outside the apartment complex
So all in all, Chinese New Year was an absolute success. We ate so much jiaozi that we each left with a baozi (a Chinese stuffed roll... a metaphor for our jiaozi food babies) and still accepted the leftovers they offered us to fry for lunch the next day. I am so thankful for the hospitality Nancy's family showed us and their willingness to include us... despite our inability to communicate beyond a toddler's level. The experience was well worth the two weeks of Armageddon sound-effects at all hours of the day and night outside my window!
春节快乐 (Happy Spring Festival!),
Amber
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