Chinese New Year

We survived Chinese New Year in China! This was the loudest, longest holiday I have ever participated in. The Chinese celebrate this holiday by spending a lot of time with family, eating tons of food, and fireworks.

The holiday is celebrated for two weeks in China. This means that most people get two weeks off work to travel to their hometown to visit family. This also meant that most grocery stores, convenience stores, etc. were closed. So we had to stock up on a lot of food before the holiday started.

 To celebrate the actual night of the Chinese New Year the Chinese will eat dinner with the husbands’ family. They also spend the next day with his family, but after those two days they can visit the wife’s family or go on vacation.

Dinner is a big deal for the Chinese. My friends and their moms spent days cooking special dishes. They all ate fish, which signifies prosperity. They only ate half of the fish because if you eat the whole thing it means that there isn’t enough to go around and the next year will not be bountiful. They also serve a lot of other dishes that sound similar to the words lucky, prosperity, etc. When each dish is placed on the table people will often cheer with joy and appreciation.

After dinner, people will visit and children are given red envelopes filled with money. People will then spend the next few days watching a telethon of performances by famous actors, singers, etc. that is sponsored by the government.

When visiting family and friends it is customary to take mandarin oranges as a gift and in return they give some back to you. The oranges signify wealth and good will.

The Chinese New Year decorations were beautiful! The people put red banners on the outside and tops of their doorways. These banners have lucky sayings on them and keep bad luck and evil spirits away. These banners will stay up all year. Stores, light poles, bridges and even personal residences put up red lanterns that were lit at night.

We went to the Xi’an city wall to see a  display of lanterns. They were beautiful. A lot of children were carrying lanterns as they walked along the wall.

Fireworks were constantly going off for the two weeks of Chinese New Year. When I say constant, I mean they started daily at 6 am and would go off all hours of the day until 2 am most nights. While some fireworks fly into the sky like American fireworks, many of the fireworks here are like our firecrackers. Loud!

The last night of the festival, people gathered in local parks to light of fireworks, firecrackers and lit off floating lanterns. It was a spectacular sight.

Xi'an city wall

View of Xi'an from the city wall

Floating lanterns