I should probably start this post but saying 新年快乐 (Xinnian Kuaile)! Which means Happy New Year in Chinese.
New year, new timetable. Last semester I started at 11.20 on a Monday, this semester it's an 8.50 start - it did feel a bit silly starting my week at 11.20 with lunch being straight after, but now it's the start of week 3 i'm almost begging for my luxurious start time again.
Now that everybody is back at work (I think) that means that the New Year celebrations are officially over. Except it was the lantern festival last week which passed me by. The fireworks, which have been going off almost every night for the last few weeks, are very pretty and I don't think you can every really get bored of impromptu firework shows. However, the endless, and unannounced bouts of fire crackers have been driving me insane - they sound like a combination of machine gun fire and collapsing buildings, it's not a very relaxing soundtrack, but they must certainly do their job of scaring away evil monsters and spirits. If the sound won't do it, the accompanying smoke certainly will!
My firecracker nemesis!
Even though I was glad I was in Foshan for New Year, I can't help feeling it was an underwhelming experience. New Year is very much a private family affair with very little in public celebration, especially in my neck of the woods. The only form of public celebration was Lion Dancing in the centre -it was certainly well attended.
Lion Dancing in Zumiao
Also appearing in the square during festival period was a
military get and a big green gun. Not sure how this is relevant to the New Year
celebrations but there you go!
The day before, on New Year’s Eve, Tom and I went to
Guangzhou for a spot of shopping and managed to end up in the middle of a
flower market, which had been set up especially for the festivities. Decorating
your house with flowers and certain types of fruit is obviously an important
part of the celebrations along with cleaning your house from top to toe and
placing lucky messages, written on red paper, around the front door of your
house.
Some form of lucky fruit...
We couldn't miss this photo opportunity - the number of people deciding to take pictures of this was quite entertaining.
It turns out windmills are also a lucky item to have for the New Year -
I lost count of the amount of people carrying them around during the festival –
so naturally I got myself a mini version rather than the gigantic versions on
offer.
My lucky windmill
Lucky envelopes are also an important part of the new year tradition. They are given down the generations, but not up, so it's quids in for the grandchildren! People also give envelopes to friends. Apparently, at New Year fill their handbags with lots of differently designed red envelopes filled with different amounts of money so they are always prepared to give the right person the right value of envelope no matter where they meet them. I got given 2 red envelopes which contained 5￥ each - a lovely unexpected gift.
My lucky envelopes - cartoon designs are the envelope design for single people apparently!
G x
