Last night we rang in the Lunar new year with our beloved neighbors, Joe and Violet, who you may remember from last year's celebration. At this time last year, we were brand new to this city thought we'd be spending Chun Jie (Spring Festival) alone, but we met Joe and Violet in our neighborhood and they asked us to join their family for Spring Festival.
Spring Festival is the biggest holiday in China: it's the celebration of the new year according to the Lunar calendar.
Violet came to pick us up at 4 o'clock and we all piled in her mother's car to head out to the celebration. It is about 35 degrees F and although homes have heating units, they don't turn them on. To keep warm, I had to dress our daughter in 5 layers of clothing. Although I thought she was plenty warm in these clothes, my Chinese friends were mortified and begged me to put on her heavy coat. After the sun went down, I obliged them and put on the coat. She couldn't even reach her hand to her mouth, she was wearing so many clothes.
Most Chinese babies, unless they turn 1 year old in the summer, are very late walkers and seldom ever even learn to crawl because they wear so many clothes as an infant. Most moms here don't let their babies crawl because there is no carpet in their home and the tile floor is quite cold. They are absolutely terrified of the cold and I am scolded often because I don't put enough clothes on Joelle! I find myself explaining, "Chinese fear the cold... well, Americans fear the heat!" and they shrug their shoulders as if to say crazy foreigner!
Violet's mother and cousin did almost all of the cooking themselves- for more than 20 guests.
This green vegetable is called Wan Dou Jian, we only eat it in the winter.
This is the kitchen where all the cooking took place. They had one light bulb sticking out from the wall, one counter top to chop and slice on, and about 5 hot-plates going at once. Unlike in America, there is no way to keep the food warm if it is served all at one time, so by the time we sat down to eat, most of the food was cool. At a restaurant, we just eat the food as it comes out... but this being a special holiday, it was proper to sit down to a table full of dishes. Hot or cold, it was still delicious!
Notice below how bundled-up everyone is! It was so cold-- even inside the house. Most families keep windows open all year long to prevent mold from growing. Many of them also believe that stagnant air makes you sick.
Below is stir-fried snap peas and ham
The top white-ish dish is "Ou",which is lotus root. Below that is sliced pig parts, behind it is spicy "machete chicken". We call it machete chicken because they don't separate the bone from the meat, they take a machete to the entire chicken until it's in bite-sized pieces.
Below is the bowl of pig parts before it was all cut up. The biggest piece is the pig head, the long pieces are pigs tongues. Also in the part are pig hearts, pig ears and pig skin. It is cured with salt and then torched with a blow-torch to give it a nice crisp. Call me crazy, but it's good if you can nibble around the cartilage!
Here is Violet and her son, John. They gave us the honor of giving him his English name, so I named him after my brother :-) Last year he was with us in his mommy's tummy!
Can you see the fireworks through the window?
This is Violet's nephew. He's three and loves the fireworks!!
I love my new Sony a580... I had fun playing with the shutter speed while everyone played with sparklers.
This is my favorite sparkler picture because the sparkler looks like a dragon... and according to the Chinese zodiac, we are now in the year of the Dragon!
Chinese lanterns are hung everywhere- especially in door frames- for good luck. Red is considered the "lucky" color... in fact, people who were born in the year of the dragon should wear red underwear this whole year to bring good luck!
This is my sweet neighbor who accompanied me while I took my camera and tripod on a search for fireworks.
My absolute favorite picture of the night:
One of the more popular kinds of fire cracker is the long string of exploders-- it is deafening if you are within a hundred yards and because it's about 8 feet long, it explodes for about 5 minutes!
Of course, at midnight, the sky was lit with fireworks. Would you believe our daughter slept through it all?
An interesting tid-bit about the Dragon zodiac: being born in the year of the dragon is enviable, because the dragon is the mightiest and luckiest of all the signs.
Happy Spring Festival!
