新年快乐! Happy New Year!
This past week we enjoyed some time off and celebrated our first Chinese New Year in China! This year Chinese New Year landed on the 31st of January. The official national holiday lasts three days, but most people will take about a week off to travel to their home towns or go on vacation. By the time we got the memo that everyone leaves town, airfares and hotels in most of the top destinations in Asia had tripled in price, so we decided to stay in Shanghai and experience CNY first hand.
Before Xiao Lin left for the week, she handmade several gallon sized bags full of yummy jiaozi (dumplings) so that we would have plenty of food for a few days. During CNY most of the smaller shops and restaurants close down so it's best to be prepared with a few days worth of food and groceries. Jiaozi are similar to potstickers and filled with meat and vegetables, and prepared by either boiling or pan-frying them. Xiao Lin instructed us to eat them for breakfast on CNY morning as they symbolize good luck and wealth. Did she say wealth?!? Nate and I made sure to eat them twice that first day, and once a day for the next few days as well.
The other thing Xiao Lin taught us about was the importance of giving out hóngbāo. Hóngbāo is the Mandarin name for the red envelopes that are filled with money and given out during CNY. We wanted to make sure that we followed the local custom during this holiday and had learned from some of our friends that we needed to give both our driver and ayi hóngbāo. The custom we didn't know about was that we also needed to give the reception, doormen, parking lot attendants, etc. who work in the building we live in hóngbāo as well. I happened to have about 10-15 envelopes, and by the time we gave one to every familiar face we had seen in the building, we were out! Here's the red envelope I bought this year -- it has a horse on it as it's the Year of the Horse! Oh, I should also mention that the money should always be new bills, and never an amount that has the number 4 in it as that is bad luck. The envelopes I chose were small, so I had to fold each bill in half which I guess I wasn't technically supposed to do but at least the bills were new!
On the first day of CNY we decided to head to Yuyuan Garden as I had seen some decorations being put up earlier in the week. Since so many people were out of town I figured it would be a nice and relaxing way for us to see some decorations, experience the festivities, and maybe even catch a dragon dance! Well, I don't know what made me think this as everyone, and I mean EVERYONE that had stayed in town was at Yuyuan Garden! Needless to say, we didn't stay long, but did get some great pictures.
Oh, and we also ate our very first street food item -- Uyghur flatbread!
Fireworks are also a big part of CNY. We had been told to expect sleepless nights during CNY with the first and fifth nights being the loudest. Luckily, the first night the air wasn't good, so I think people refrained from setting off too many fireworks as we had no issues sleeping, and it wasn't really loud at all. As a few days passed, we forgot about the fifth night until it hit! Between 10PM-3AM, fireworks could be heard and seen all around the city, with the loudest and brightest fireworks going off exactly at midnight on the fifth day. The fifth day is the God of Wealth's birthday and it is believed that setting off fireworks will wake him up and bring great wealth for the new year! Although we didn't set any off -- we are all for great wealth and didn't mind as many fireworks as possible! We had a few videos that showed just how many fireworks were going off around our neighborhood and in the city and how loud it was; however, they ended up being to larger to load. Here are a few pictures instead...
The only thing that we couldn't seem to find was a lion dance! I was super disappointed, but all in all we're really happy we stayed in China for CNY! We had a chance to explore the city with a lot less people around, try out a few restaurants this past week that are normally too hard to get reservations at, and finally check something off my bucket list -- experience Chinese New Year in China!
~ Trisha
P.S. To see a few more pictures from our adventures during CNY, visit Nate's 'cny, shanghai [feb '14] ' album.