Chinese New Year’s Parties

Chinese New Year, also called Spring Festival, is the biggest holiday celebration of the year.  While the official holiday is only three days long, most employers give off a full week.  Then most people also take an additional week of vacation time here, giving them two weeks off.  It is customary for the Chinese to travel to their family home (laojia) during this time (most people work very far from home), which means the country both shuts down but is also incredibly lively with the vast movement of people.

We attended two Chinese New Year’s celebrations this year.  The first was an “owner” (i.e. the person buying the power plant) sponsored party for the entire mechanical group (Startup and Engineering) and had about 200 in attendance.  Held two weeks before the actual holiday, the night started with a number of skits, singing routines, and karaoke.  I believe everyone in attendance (except for the expats) participated in one of the presentations.  While a few groups clearly did not put much effort into rehearsing their performances, most appeared to have put a tremendous amount of time into learning their lines and/or the choreographed dance moves.  LiLi had a fantastic time watching the entire night.

After about 2/3^rd of the presentations had been completed dinner began, which was a pretty standard Chinese dinner consisting of about 40 different dishes.  Interestingly, we almost always find the first eight dishes served to be less than appetizing and then increasingly good food is served.  We’re not sure if the Chinese agree with this sentiment or consider the quality of food to decrease as the dishes are served.  We recently learned why we can never convince the wait staff to serve us the rice at the beginning of the meal: traditionally the flavored food is consumed first and then you finish with the rice.  That way if any food is discarded it’s only the cheap rice.  However, we always like to get the rice first because we can use it to decrease the intensity of Chinese flavors (especially spicy).

After dinner was complete, about five groups of five executives started making rounds to all of the tables to wish everyone a happy new year and toast to the success of the group.  At this point LiLi began making her rounds running between the tables and finding people to interact with.  She had a fantastic time and, even without having had a nap that day, she was still going strong when we left at 9:30 (it started at 5:20).

 

For the actual Chinese New Year’s Eve we spent the night at the Pan family home in the neighboring village.   At five o’clock we walked over to their house and found dinner just about done.  The group of 12 consisted of LiLi’s teacher (Pan LinCai), her husband, their four-year-old daughter (LiLi’s best friend), her husband’s parents, and his sister.  The three people who run the American restaurant, next door, also came down and ate with us.  Of this group, only the sister-in-law knows any English.  When we talk with her about a third of the conversation is in Chinese and two thirds in English (plus a little Google translate help for one detailed question she wanted to ask us). With the others we can communicate simple concepts in Chinese.  And of course, you don’t need any language to watch kids and shoot off fireworks.

 

A word about the setting is in order: the floor and walls are dirty concrete and we’re sitting on a mix of wooden and plastic stools (all of varying height).  It was snowing lightly outside and the only heat comes from the 3ft diameter wood fired wok leaving the indoor temperature at about 38F.  However, there are a number of new appliances like a refrigerator, two burner propane stove top, and microwave.

 

Everything we ate was really excellent.  There was a lot of fish, shrimp, calamari, cooked vegetables, chicken, and pork.  Right after dinner we went out into the front room and sat and stood around a smaller table with a plate of fresh fruit (strawberries, apples, mandarin oranges and Chinese grapefruit (bigger and less tart than ours).  They also splurged on some imported Lipton Yellow Label Black Tea for us (though we probably would have rather had traditional tea it was nice that they tried to do this for us).  We then went outside and lit off some fireworks.  LiLi was a little scared by them and very concerned that we should all be in the door frame and not too close to the fireworks.  We hear fireworks all of the time here (any time of year here both day and night), but we had never been so close to them before.

We then went upstairs to LinCai’s bedroom to watch the national show.  We had never been upstairs (it’s a three story home) and this was not what we were expecting.  The room was still a concrete home but the bedding was nice, there were large curtains over the windows, and an air conditioner installed in the wall.  There was also a reasonable sized TV with cable, a computer (which was not new) with internet and a wireless modem (for the sister-in-law’s netbook).  Most amazing of all:  above the bed was a beautifully framed almost four foot square picture from their wedding.  When we crossed into the daughter’s room (having to go outside to get there) there were four more wedding photos nearly three feet square.  Later in the night we saw their wedding album which consisted of many photos of them in six different outfits and gowns laid out on a 14” wide and 30” tall plastic pages.  In the US this set of wedding photos would probably be approaching $10,000.  When we inquired with them about the wedding we learned that their daughter was born “ten months” after they were legally married (we’re assuming more like six months).  Then they saved for two years before they were able to afford a respectable wedding.  We have seen this pattern elsewhere, I have two Chinese co-workers who are legally married but have not yet had their ceremonies. 

Anyways, we watched the show for about 90 minutes at which point LiLi was no longer having a very good night, the husband was asleep in bed, and LinCai was nowhere to be found.  We headed for home well before midnight, but having had quite an authentic Chinese New Year.  We scheduled to come back the next day to walk on the local beach, said good night and headed home.

Part 1: Christmas 2011

Vicki’s family came to visit Dec. 19^th-31^st.  Our visitors were made up of her parents, Preston and Patsy, her 24 year old brother Sam, and our 10 year old niece Trinitie.  We sure had a busy two weeks.  It went by so fast that Christmas and New Years seem like a blur.  Our trip itinerary was as follows:

Monday, December 19th

The Miller’s flight arrived at Shanghai-Pudong Airport at 4PM, but it took them awhile to make it through customs.  We didn’t get to our hotel until 6PM or so.  Being thrifty, Vicki’s family had opted for the cheapest but still decent hotel in Shanghai – the Zhabei Holiday Inn Express.  We usually stay here during weekend trips ourselves.  However, as a Christmas gift, we decided to upgrade them all to the Sky Fortune Boutique Hotel – a 5-star hotel Mark’s company often uses, so we get a discount there.  They were all quite surprised and really enjoyed the breakfast there.  We couldn’t afford a hotel like this in the States and we knew they were likely never to experience something like it again, so it was nice to be able to do that for them.

That first night we took them to dinner near the Bund at a restaurant, called Lost Heaven, which serves food from Yunnan Province (similar to Tibetan food).  We ended the evening with a walk along the Bund, looking at the night lights and contrasting architecture.  The Bund is the financial district of Shanghai.  The one side was built during the early 1900’s (peaking in 1929) and the other was built largely in the last 15 years.  It is an amazing contrast of the best from both sides of a century. 

Tuesday, December 20th

We did a whirlwind tour of Shanghai, visiting the Jade Buddha Temple, Old Town, Seven Corner Bridge/Yu Yuan Garden, and the Lupu Bridge.  We had never done Lupu Bridge before and it was a relatively smog-free day in Shanghai, even if overcast.  It is the 2^nd longest arch bridge in the world (beat by 7 feet by another bridge in South-West China in 2009!).  We took an elevator up to the base of the bridge and then climbed the 367 (short) steps to the top of the arch of the bridge.  It was cool and gave us pretty good view of the city.

We then caught a 5PM train to Beijing.  This fast train to Beijing makes the journey of 800 miles in less than 5 hours.  It travels, on average, 200mph.  It was a pleasant journey.  Getting to our hotel in Beijing was a bit more of an adventure.  Since we had seven people (counting LiLi), travel almost always required two taxis.  Vicki’s taxi (with Patsy, Trinitie, and LiLi) made it to the hotel with the driver only stopping once to ask directions.  Mark’s taxi driver (with Sam and Preston) took them down tiny back alleys and all over the place (he entered the wrong address in his GPS) before making it to the hotel only after Vicki gave her cell phone to the hotel staff.

We were staying at a much cheaper hotel this time – a Chinese business hotel 2 miles from Tian’anmen Square.  Vicki’s family was supposed to get a family suite with three beds, but instead there were only two beds.  This meant Sam and Preston shared a bed and Patsy and Trinitie did as well.  Not ideal, but manageable.  The shower in their room also didn’t have a shower curtain or a lip, meaning the water would come up past the sink once someone showered.  Additionally, their room, which was two levels, would often lose its banister up to the second floor.  The first night when Mark was looking for the stairwell in the hallway he went to open the door he thought was it and the handle came off in his hand.  Yes, this certainly was a 3.5 star Chinese hotel.

Wednesday, December 21

In the morning we got a (very poor) Beijing map from the hotel and set off to visit some sites.  We were heading for the Forbidden City but somehow ended up at the Beijing Train Station instead.  Once we sorted out where we were, we took some interesting side alleys on our walk to Tian’anmen and came upon an old Protestant church amongst some rundown homes.  The security guard told us we could walk through their building.  It was neat to see an old church that survived the cultural revolution.

Before making it to Tian’anmen Square proper, we came upon the Zhengyangmen – an old city gate to Beijing (Mark’s favorite part of Beijing).  We then walked through Tian’anmen Square on our way to the Forbidden City.  The size of Tian’anmen Square is astonishing.  Seriously, it screams “perfect protest location”.  It was a cold and windy day though, so we quickly walked across the square and into the Forbidden City, the old imperial palace.  Having pushed LiLi pretty hard already (and it was cold!), she started to melt down, so Vicki and LiLi hung out in a little coffee shop there for much of the exploration of the Forbidden City.  We were at the Forbidden City until nearly closing time and then walked to a nearby Chinese restaurant where we had a successful (success in China = edible) meal which included Peking Duck.  The only suspect item we ended up with was a cold fish with strange flavoring… which Preston still deemed edible despite its numerous bones.

We then began a cold walk back to the hotel since all of the taxis seemed to be full.  After a little bit, LiLi (rightfully!) deemed it a silly idea and Vicki and Patsy were able to catch an informal taxi cart back to the hotel.  Although we clearly negotiated the rate at 30RMB before getting in, the driver must have thought he could pull one over the “laowei” (foreigners).  Once at the hotel, the driver said we owed him 90RMB – 30RMB each for Vicki, Patsy, and LiLi.  Knowing this was an attempt to scam us, Vicki argued with the driver and sent him on his way with just the 30RMB.  It’s nice to know a little bit about how things work here now, and to also know when we are being given the “Yankee discount” as the expats like to call it.

Mark, Trinitie, Sam, and Preston took the VERY long way back to the hotel and arrived about 40 minutes later.  Upon reaching the location of the hotel according to the map, there was no sight of the hotel.  We asked some people for directions, which were wrong, and we also misunderstood making the wrong directions worse.  Anyways, we got to walk about mile to end up about 100 yards from where we started.  Part of the problem is that Beijing street names are confusingly similar to each other (ex. 朝阳门内大街 and 朝阳门南小街) and they often list the road that is coming up, but fail to tell you what road you are on.  They were glad to make it back at all!

Thursday, December 22

One of the sad things about touring cities we’ve never done before is when we get things wrong – like the amount of time it will take us to get from our hotel to the Beijing North train station.  The plan was to take a morning train to the Badaling section of the Great Wall (80K north-west of Beijing), but the taxis took so long getting to the train station, that we would have had to sit for awhile and not get to the Great Wall until after lunch.  Once we regrouped at the train station, we quickly changed our plans and decided to head to the Summer Palace instead, since that was on the outskirts of Beijing and we were most of the way there already.  Even though taxis had just dropped us off, they suddenly seemed scarce.  After some mild negotiations a black market taxi driver agreed to take us for Y100 ($15)… but I quickly realized he could only take half of the group and it would be $30 total.  While Mark was negotiating [“Correct, Correct, the price is Y100: Y50 and Y50 = Y100”], Vicki continued to watch out for taxis and soon flagged one.  As four of us piled into the taxi, it was amazing to hear the price of the black market drivers come down [ok, ok, Y80, ok, ok, Y60]!  Apparently they didn’t think we knew how to flag a taxi or what we should be paying.  Vicki and her group made it to the Summer Palace for Y30 ($4.50) per the publicly metered taxi.  While still double the price, Mark decided it would be worth it so that the rest of the group wouldn’t have to be kept waiting while he tried to find a public taxi.  Our combined time was worth more than $4.50 in savings!

利利 (LiLi) and 缇缇 (TiTi) at the Summer Palace

The Summer Palace was pretty spectacular.  While the particular location was an important site for Chinese emperors from the 12^th century on, it wasn’t actually turned into the expansive gardens/summer palace retreat until 1750.  It was torched by the Anglo-French in 1860 during the Second Opium War and again in during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900.  It was rebuilt in 1886 and 1902 when the out of touch last Empress of China diverted money from the (recently annihilated) Chinese navy to rebuild the place.  The grounds of the palace are constructed to be reminiscent of other key spots in China – like the lake is supposed to imitate the famous West Lake in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China and Suzhoujie (Suzhou Street), an area along a ‘canal’ with lots of little shops, is supposed to imitate the ancient style of shops in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China and serve as a place where the Emperor and his concubines could feel like they were on a commercial street.  Apparently “when the royals went there, eunuchs and maids of honor would playact as peddlers, customers and shop assistants to mimic market activities” (http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/beijing/summer/suzhou.htm).  The canal was frozen over when we were there, so they had little ice carts you could rent and cruise around on by digging spikes into the ice to propel yourself.  It was a fun activity to do – though LiLi (who stayed on shore with Grandma except for when Grandpa gave her a ride) would get upset if Mama or Baba fell!

The Summer Palace didn’t open to the public until 1990, but today it seems to be a community location (you can buy season passes for cheap).  There was a community singing event going on when we were there, and also lots of the older Chinese there doing their morning calisthenics.

We then decided to head over to the Old Summer Palace around 2:30PM, even though we hadn’t exhausted the grounds of the Summer Palace by any means.  The Old Summer Palace was pretty disappointing though.   First, it wasn’t as old as we would have liked (build during the 18^th & 19^th centuries).  And second, there weren’t really many ruins left (at least we didn’t find them), so it felt like we were just walking through a pretty park. 

We decided to call it a day for tourism (most stuff closed at 4:30PM) and go eat an early dinner.  So we took the subway back to a local street food market we had passed the day before on our (long) walk back to the hotel from the Forbidden City.  This food market had lots of fun things like fried pumpkin, shrimp on a stick, fried bananas, fish, etc. as well as a lot of strange items like starfish, scorpion, and snake on a stick… or fried silk worms.  Most of the group had a fun time at the market and our family ate until overly full, though it would have been better if it was a little warmer outside.  It’s hard to eat dinner in the cold wind!

We managed to get taxis back to the hotel (not even thinking about trying to walk it this time!) after a little bit and headed to bed early so we could get a much earlier start the next day.

Friday, December 23

Not wanting to miss our train to the Great Wall again, we left the hotel by 5:15AM and had no problem catching two taxis.  We made it to the train station with plenty of time to buy our tickets and wait to board the 6:12AM train.  We got to Badaling just after 7AM.  The Great Wall was said to open at 7AM, but we exited the train station to a ghost town.  Oh, and it was very, very cold (~20F) and windy.  We had hoped to kill some time at the Great Wall Museum while the morning warmed up a bit, but the building we were told was it was vacant and locked.  We finally found a noodle shop that wasn’t technically open but had the door unlocked (for staff) so we went in to warm up while Mark ran ahead to see if he could gather any other info for the group.  He found a little shop at the entrance to the Great Wall that was open and selling warm clothing (ski gloves, face masks, scarves, etc.) and hot drinks.  So after spending a bunch of money there, it was decided that Vicki and LiLi would stay back (still too cold to put a toddler on the Great Wall) and the rest of the group would venture out.  The Great Wall gets very repetitive very quickly, so Trinitie, Patsy, and Preston returned after about 45 minutes, satisfied that they had climbed the Great Wall though surprised at how disappointing the vigor of the moment actually is!  Mark convinced Sam to pick up the pace and actually go run the wall with him.  Roundtrip the two of them did about 3.5 miles of the wall, often trying to keep their balance as they ran quickly up and down uneven steps.  At least Mark gave Sam a memorable experience!

We then caught the 11:20AM train back to Beijing.  We took the subway to the Temple of Heaven where we spent the rest of our afternoon.  Vicki’s family must have been really been suffering “emperor fatigue” by the time we did this tourist spot since their favorite part seemed to be the outdoor exercise equipment so prevalent all around China!  It will likely be a memorable experience for them though to see so many people gathering outside in the cold to exercise together!  Vicki’s dad Preston was even applauded by a Chinese woman when he did a flip on some parallel bars!  They would have stayed longer playing there, but we made them leave to go see the actual attraction of the Temple of Heaven!

At 3PM Mark, Preston, and Sam left to go gather our luggage at the hotel before we all met up at the train station again to catch our 5PM train back to Shanghai.

While a lot of stuff in China has started to seem the same to us, Beijing was different.  It was so Emperor-focused.  Everything had to do with the Emperor’s family and Emperor worship.  And the Great Wall is such a long-lasting landmark of their national fear of outsiders.  It was quite the contrast to modern Shanghai!  It would have been nice to be better versed in that history BEFORE we went though.  So if you want to visit us in China and visit Beijing, make sure you do some reading on the Emperors of China, the First and Second Opium Wars, the Boxer Rebellion, and the Cultural Revolution.  It will help to provide a more meaningful experience!

Next up: A summary of our visit to Suzhou, Sanmen County (our home), and YanDangShan