Saturday, January 31, 2009

Pictures!

After nearly two hours spent sitting outside (in the snow) with my laptop, connected to the seemingly random wireless internet that exists in a courtyard area in the middle of campus, I have uploaded some pictures from my holidays here in China.  I won't go into details here, since there are captions with the pictures, but the series starts with American Thanksgiving and goes through what I have experienced so far of the Chinese Spring Festival/New Year.  I used to think the Thanksgiving – Christmas – New Year series of holidays in the U.S. made for a nice long holiday season; that's nothing compared to what I have celebrated this year! It's been fun, and I hope you enjoy the pictures. 

 

Here's the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/vrieland/Holidays

 

On a completely unrelated and totally random note, I had a slight mishap with my adventurism today.  Living in a foreign country (where you only sort of know the language) is only fun if you're adventurous, I think, so I try to live by that.  Usually it's great.

 

Recently I've been having fun trying all the different kinds of milk here in China.  (Don't worry, I know there was that little milk situation a few months ago.  I'm pretty sure what I've been drinking is fine.)  Not only does China have regular milk, they have flavored milk as well.  This concept is not surprising in itself, since we have chocolate milk and can make strawberry milk in the U.S., too.  But the varieties here are beyond comparison.  My favorites so far are the walnut flavor and the coffee flavor. 

 

My least favorite? Grape. 

 

That one should never have happened.

 

And unfortunately, in my zeal for adventurism, I just picked up several new varieties I hadn't tried before without looking carefully at what flavor they were.  If I had seen "grape," I wouldn't have gotten it.  I don't even like grape flavor! But wow, grape flavored milk is especially disturbing.

 

Don't worry though; this little incident has not affected my zeal for adventurism too much.  I just bought a new round of milk (actually reading the labels this time), and I'm eager to try the new coconut flavored one. J

 

(And for those of you who think Canada is cool because milk there comes in a bag, just for your information, milk here comes in bags, too.  Individual size bags, which is superbly convenient for being adventurous and trying all sorts of different flavors.)

Monday, January 26, 2009

It's been quite a day... and it's only noon!

Even though I'm on vacation, I have great motivation to get up in the morning: hot water. The hot water hours don't change for anything… holidays, vacation, anything. If it's a weekday, the morning hours are 6:30-8:30, non negotiable. Furthermore, when they say 8:30, what they really mean is that you shouldn't plan on any hot water after 8:15, and some days you might be pleasantly surprised that it actually goes all the way until 8:30. So despite the holiday, despite staying out late at night since all my friends are also free these days, I still have motivation to be up at a reasonable hour.

Today I even planned ahead. I had to do laundry, which is something I do far too infrequently by any American standards but still more often than most Chinese people. Since my laundry facilities are my bathroom sink and the rod that runs across my bathroom for hanging things like drying laundry, it's always more pleasant to do the chore when my hands can at least enjoy some warm water. (Honestly, doing laundry by hand is ridiculously unpleasant during winter when the only water you have feels like it just melted a moment before it came out of the faucet.) So I got up plenty early today to do some laundry before 8:15.

On the bright side, the warm water lasted until 8:25 this morning, which meant I got to wash a few more pieces of long underwear than I had originally planned.

On the not-so-bright side, somehow my "wet bathroom" turned into just a "wet room." Let me explain. A "wet bathroom" is one of those bathrooms only common in Asia as far as I know, where the shower head just hangs right over the toilet and the sink, without a tub or a shower stall. So whenever one showers, the entire bathroom gets wet. (Hence the name.) Well, I've lived in China long enough to be accustomed to a wet bathroom. I know where to keep my toilet paper so it doesn't get too wet. I know not to keep my cotton balls in the bathroom at all. And I know how to hang my towel so it actually has some sort of efficacy at making me dry after I'm done.

I don't know what went wrong today.

My toilet paper got soaked and my towel was dripping by the time I was ready to use it. Even my cotton balls would have gotten wet if I didn't keep them on the complete other side of my room. Because when I opened the bathroom door, I saw water covering the floor of almost my entire dorm room. Whoa. Talk about an unpleasant surprise!

It honestly took me half an hour to clean up all the water, and even then it took a while for the floor itself to dry. And now my floor is squeaky. Not a good sign.

Makes me glad I live on the seventh floor, where no one is above me. I just hope the room beneath me wasn't unpleasantly surprised by water coming from the ceiling!

So that was my morning. I have absolutely no idea why my wet bathroom couldn't be contained today, whereas usually only the towel on the floor just outside the door gets a little wet. We'll see how tomorrow morning goes. If it's anything like today, I'll be sure to keep you all updated!

While my morning was certainly unexpected and quite an experience, it hasn't been the highlight of my day so far. The highlight came around eleven.

I seem to have made a Chinese friend. Although I have been living in China for five months now, I actually don't have many (any?) Chinese friends. Don't get me wrong, I know a ton of Chinese people. But Chinese people who have any interest in interacting with foreigners always come with some sort of ulterior motive. Most of them want to practice their English or have help getting to the U.S. Then some of the guys have other ulterior motives, if you catch my drift. (White girls in China don't have the most moral reputation.)

But I seem to have made a new friend. Certainly, I think he enjoys being able to practice his English with me and I'll admit that I helped proofread some essays he wrote for Ph.D. programs in the U.S. But all told, it's a beneficial relationship both directions.

So this friend of mine came to my dorm today to bring me a variety of traditional Chinese New Year foods. He brought me a whole bag of homemade jiaozi (dumplings), the most famous New Year food. He also brought several kinds of nuts and some other candies.

Since he came around lunchtime, he offered to teach me how to cook the dumplings. Not wanting to admit that I've actually cooked dumplings many times in the past (because really, I've never actually seen a Chinese person do it), I eagerly accepted. So we cooked up some of the dumplings and had an absolutely delicious meal. Even more exciting, though, was that while eating, he explained a whole lot about this whole New Year festival that's going on right now. I've honestly been quite confused about which days are important, why it lasts so long, etc. But with his excellent English and his inside understanding of the culture, he was able to explain it quite well.

Here's what I learned. The biggest meal of the whole thing is on the last night of the old year (this past Sunday). The meal is planned for the typical Chinese dinner hour, around 5 p.m. or so. After it's all set out and ready, the whole family first goes outside and sets off some fireworks. Then they all go in for a big meal. Starting from 8:00 p.m., there is apparently a famous program showing on TV that most Chinese families watch. (Wish I had known about that before it happened!) As they watch the program, the family sits together, chats, and wraps the dumplings for later. (No dumplings are eaten during the big meal earlier.) Just before midnight, the family eats a few dumplings and then goes outside for the biggest fireworks celebration.

On the morning of the first day of the month, more dumplings are eaten, and often some candy. Some families have the tradition that no one is allowed to talk in the morning before eating some candy. Seems a little bit strange to me, but whatever. J Then that day is designated for visiting the parents of the mother. On the second day of the month, families visit the father's parents. Today is the second day of the month, but my friend was free because his father's parents live in Dalian. Only his dad went down to visit them.

The third and fourth days just seem to be more days off to relax and enjoy family and friends, and then apparently the fifth day is another big fireworks day. He didn't really know why, so I certainly don't either, but apparently I can look forward to more fireworks on Friday.

Then you have the rest of the two weeks of the celebration, until the 15th day of the month, known as Yuanxiao Jie. There's no good English translation of that. Yuanxiao are little round balls made from pounded sweet rice and filled with sweet peanut, black sesame, or similar fillings, usually served in a soup. I tried some when I was in China before, even though I've never been here for the holiday before. Very tasty, actually. Then Jie is just the word for "holiday" or "festival." Apparently that is the last legal day for fireworks as well. So I'm sure I can look forward to plenty more noise that day!

And that's the end of the festival.

Turns out I was wrong about something else, too, though. I had thought that Yuanxiao Jie was the day everyone gets their haircut. No, no. Apparently the superstition is that you will cause bad luck for your uncle if you get your hair cut anytime during the first month. So I guess it'll be a while before I get the haircut I'm wanting.

Happy New Year! (Chinese style...)

Turns out I'm a terrible blogger.  Somehow life has gotten in the way of my updating this blog, and many of you seem to have noticed.  Apparently people actually read this! J

 

So I'm going to try to catch you all up on the last month of my time here in China, and then stay up during the remaining several months.  However (not to make excuses, but…), I still don't have internet.  Seriously, I have not spent more than 10 minutes on the internet at one time in more than a month.  And once you add in the fact that my "brother" here who usually lets me use his internet is leaving at the end of the week, I really don't know how I'm going to stay connected.  But I promise I'll try.

 

Where to start?  I suppose I'll start with the freshest thing in my mind.  How many of you like fireworks?  Let me tell you, you have never experienced fireworks until you've experienced the biggest holiday in the country that invented fireworks! 

 

Most traditional Chinese holidays are based on the lunar calendar, not the solar calendar we're all accustomed to.  So that's where the concept of the "Chinese New Year" comes from: it's the change of the year on the lunar calendar.  And for those of you who are not up on your dates according to the lunar calendar, Chinese New Year is today (January 26).  Like celebrating the normal new year in the U.S., people stay up the night before to ring it in.  The difference? In the U.S., we nonchalantly celebrate on December 31 and January 1.  In China, they passionately celebrate the Chinese New Year for three weeks!   

 

Sunday, January 18 (the 23rd day of the last month on the lunar calendar) was the official beginning of the holiday season.  Although there's no recognized English name for the day, the literal translation is "Little New Year."  From what I've gathered, there is nothing particularly special about the day, except that it marks the beginning of the season.  Therefore, fireworks are shot off and people start making their preparations for the main holiday, Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year). 

 

I was in Dalian on Little New Year, which is a city about 4 hours by train from where I live in Shenyang.  Since I'm not particularly in the habit of paying much attention to the lunar calendar, I actually didn't know it was a significant day.  Until, that is, I was waiting in the train station for my train back to Shenyang, and fireworks started going off all around the city.  I had a beautiful view of some from one of the windows, and actually met a Chinese girl with very good English who explained what was going on. 

 

The week between Little New Year and Spring Festival is an experience in itself.  Imagine: 1.3 billion people all trying to prepare for major celebrations, all shopping for tons of food, all stocking up because everything will be closed for three days, and all traveling back to their home cities to be with their families.  Yeah.  It was crazy.  I made the mistake of not doing my own shopping until Saturday afternoon, the last day before everything closes.  Haha. Oops.  I spent thirty minutes in line to check out of the store, not because the cashiers were slow or that there weren't enough (all 30+ lines were open), but because of all the people.  Crazy. 

 

The week was also marked by an increase in noise and a decrease in taxis.  Neither of which I was particularly fond of.  The noise was caused by all the fireworks and firecrackers people were setting off.  The decrease in taxis I suppose was caused by taxi drivers taking time off and the increase in people trying to use them, thus making it nearly impossible to grab a taxi anymore.

 

But the increase in noise and the decrease in taxis during the past week was only the tip of the iceberg.  Sunday afternoon, the equivalent of New Year's Eve, I went to my normal fellowship.  It took us a while to get a taxi, but then to our surprise, it only took us 5 minutes to drive all the way to our building! Usually it takes 15 minutes or so (more in heavy traffic), but the roads were nearly completely empty!  No cars, no taxis, no people.  It was actually quite creepy.  Coming home after fellowship was a similar experience, and our typical habit of going out for dinner afterwards was obviously interrupted because no restaurants were open.

 

So I got home, made myself some dinner (using the ingredients I had so brilliantly stocked up on Saturday), and then just hung out waiting.  I had been warned that it would be futile to try going to sleep before midnight, so I just waited around.  And that advice proved to be correct! From 6:30 p.m. when I was coming home until sometime after I fell asleep at 2:00 a.m., fireworks were going on constantly.  I'm pretty sure there was not a single 5 minute period where I didn't hear the sound of fireworks.  And the highlights?  From 11:45 – 12:15, there were solid fireworks in every direction! Anywhere you looked, all you could see were fireworks.  I stood at my window and watched fireworks literally everywhere I could see.  Wow, it was intense!

 

Seriously, any fireworks fans out there need to see the fireworks on Chinese New Year in China sometime.  Nothing compares.

 

There was just one other thought, though, that crossed my mind as I was watching the skyline disappear into the smoke of the fireworks: it's no wonder that the air pollution here is as it is.