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.