[This is my Trail] Happy "Niu" Year
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Rachelle
Feb 27, 2009, 3:56:59 AM2/27/09
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Oh how we foreigners love our Chinglish humor. We find ourselves so punny!
If you don't get the joke, 2009 is the year of the cow, ox, bull, etc. In Chinese, the word for this type of animal is "niu" (牛), which of course sounds a lot like "new." Hardee-har-har.
Anyway, the Spring Festival (Chunjie 春节), commonly called "Chinese New Year" in the US, is officially over now. The last day of the celebration, usually called "Lantern Festival" in English, despite actually being called Little New Year (Xiaonian 小年) or Yuanxiao (sticky rice balls) Festival (Yuanxiao Jie 元宵节) in Chinese, was marked by the complete destruction of the nearly finished Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing. Apparently it was set on fire by fireworks, which are pretty much unregulated here. Conspiracy theorists say they did it on purpose to collect the insurance money in the bad economy. Believe what you will, but I'm just pointing to this as another reason why crazy Chinese people shouldn't be able to buy industrial strength fireworks and set them off in the middle of cities. But maybe I'm just annoyed at having been woken up in the middle of the night every night for two weeks straight. At any rate, fireworks are the quintessential part of any Chunjie cele
brations.
The holiday comes with one week off from work, and I used this time to travel south (where sadly it wasn't much warmer), with a coworker (English name: Lotus, Chinese name: Jiang) and various others. We hit 4 cities (and 2 villages) in 7 days. But the trip was actually more relaxing than that sounds.
let's just say we got the last tickets (and thus, the back seat) and ended up taFirst we headed to Mengzi on the bus, where we met up with my coworker's friend, Kelly. The bus ride is perhaps worth a whole post of its own, butking a detour due to a traffic jam, which ended up with the bus driving through a VERY bumpy road in the middle of a sugar cane field. Needless to say, sitting in the back seat became quite entertaining as we were bumped out of our seats numerous times with my head nearly hitting the ceiling. I couldn't stop giggling, which just made the Chinese people start laughing, and it was one big party in the back of the bus (where you know all the cool kids are!).
Kelly is from Mengzi and so we spent the next several days hanging out with her friends and family, including the actual New Year's Eve celebrations. Mostly, we just started eating and never stopped. Her family was very welcoming (especially the 8 and 10 year old girls, who took to calling me Kung Fu Panda--long story). There were almost 30 people all together for the New Year's meal of hotpot, so we had 3 separate pots in separate rooms. They made SO MUCH food. I couldn't believe it. Even with that many people, we all ate leftovers for lunch the next day and there was still some food left. Haha. After dinner, we watched the first part of the CCTV New Year's Gala/Extravaganza, which pretty much everyone in the country watch
es. Apparently Chinese people think it hasn't been so great recently. This is the first one I watched, but I wasn't all that impressed. Perhaps they spent all last year preparing for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics instead. I did enjoy seeing my Chinese boyfriend Jay Chou sing and dance, though! After about an hour of the show, the young people went out to play with sparklers and set off some small fireworks.
It was definitely fun hanging out with a Chinese family for the holiday. And Kelly, her family, and her friends paid for EVERYTHING except the hotel room (although we did stay at their house once all the rest of the family was gone). Chinese always fight for the bill, and I'm just apparently not quick enough...(or maybe didn't really try. Hehe.).
Mengzi is the home of the famous "Cross the Bridge Rice Noodles" or "过桥米线 (guo qiao mi xian)," so we made a visit to the actual bridge that was crossed with the noodles. It's not actually particularly exciting (and I don't particularly like cross the bridge rice noodles), but there's not actually that much to see in Mengzi. Just lots (and lots and lots)
to eat. Legend has it that a man was studying to take the imperial exam and he lived on an island so he wouldn't be distracted. His wife brought him lunch every day, but was sad that the food was never hot. One day she fell asleep while cooking the broth, the fire went out, but the broth was still hot. She began carrying her husband hot broth and all the ingredients (meat, noodles, etc.) were added once she got to the island.
Needless to say, all forms of noodles are quite popular in Mengzi. My favorite was the rabbit meat noodles that we had. And it was just great that the restaurant had pictures of fuzzy bunnies on their sign. Other than eating, we didn't do much other than relax and drink tea (one
of Kelly's friends has her own tea shop). We did take a big group picture with the family (another Chunjie tradition) and I hope to scan it and post it soon (I actually just got a copy of it yesterday). Lots of Asians and one white girl. Haha.
I'll write another post about the other 3 cities (Gejiu, Jianshui, and Yuanyang) soon, but that's my recap of the actual holiday--fireworks and food. Or maybe soon-ish, as the trip was already a month ago and I haven't written it yet. Time is all relative anyway...
--
Posted By Rachelle to This is my Trail at 2/27/2009 03:52:00 AM
If you don't get the joke, 2009 is the year of the cow, ox, bull, etc. In Chinese, the word for this type of animal is "niu" (牛), which of course sounds a lot like "new." Hardee-har-har.
Anyway, the Spring Festival (Chunjie 春节), commonly called "Chinese New Year" in the US, is officially over now. The last day of the celebration, usually called "Lantern Festival" in English, despite actually being called Little New Year (Xiaonian 小年) or Yuanxiao (sticky rice balls) Festival (Yuanxiao Jie 元宵节) in Chinese, was marked by the complete destruction of the nearly finished Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Beijing. Apparently it was set on fire by fireworks, which are pretty much unregulated here. Conspiracy theorists say they did it on purpose to collect the insurance money in the bad economy. Believe what you will, but I'm just pointing to this as another reason why crazy Chinese people shouldn't be able to buy industrial strength fireworks and set them off in the middle of cities. But maybe I'm just annoyed at having been woken up in the middle of the night every night for two weeks straight. At any rate, fireworks are the quintessential part of any Chunjie cele
brations.The holiday comes with one week off from work, and I used this time to travel south (where sadly it wasn't much warmer), with a coworker (English name: Lotus, Chinese name: Jiang) and various others. We hit 4 cities (and 2 villages) in 7 days. But the trip was actually more relaxing than that sounds.
let's just say we got the last tickets (and thus, the back seat) and ended up taFirst we headed to Mengzi on the bus, where we met up with my coworker's friend, Kelly. The bus ride is perhaps worth a whole post of its own, butking a detour due to a traffic jam, which ended up with the bus driving through a VERY bumpy road in the middle of a sugar cane field. Needless to say, sitting in the back seat became quite entertaining as we were bumped out of our seats numerous times with my head nearly hitting the ceiling. I couldn't stop giggling, which just made the Chinese people start laughing, and it was one big party in the back of the bus (where you know all the cool kids are!).
Kelly is from Mengzi and so we spent the next several days hanging out with her friends and family, including the actual New Year's Eve celebrations. Mostly, we just started eating and never stopped. Her family was very welcoming (especially the 8 and 10 year old girls, who took to calling me Kung Fu Panda--long story). There were almost 30 people all together for the New Year's meal of hotpot, so we had 3 separate pots in separate rooms. They made SO MUCH food. I couldn't believe it. Even with that many people, we all ate leftovers for lunch the next day and there was still some food left. Haha. After dinner, we watched the first part of the CCTV New Year's Gala/Extravaganza, which pretty much everyone in the country watch
es. Apparently Chinese people think it hasn't been so great recently. This is the first one I watched, but I wasn't all that impressed. Perhaps they spent all last year preparing for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics instead. I did enjoy seeing my Chinese boyfriend Jay Chou sing and dance, though! After about an hour of the show, the young people went out to play with sparklers and set off some small fireworks.It was definitely fun hanging out with a Chinese family for the holiday. And Kelly, her family, and her friends paid for EVERYTHING except the hotel room (although we did stay at their house once all the rest of the family was gone). Chinese always fight for the bill, and I'm just apparently not quick enough...(or maybe didn't really try. Hehe.).
Mengzi is the home of the famous "Cross the Bridge Rice Noodles" or "过桥米线 (guo qiao mi xian)," so we made a visit to the actual bridge that was crossed with the noodles. It's not actually particularly exciting (and I don't particularly like cross the bridge rice noodles), but there's not actually that much to see in Mengzi. Just lots (and lots and lots)
to eat. Legend has it that a man was studying to take the imperial exam and he lived on an island so he wouldn't be distracted. His wife brought him lunch every day, but was sad that the food was never hot. One day she fell asleep while cooking the broth, the fire went out, but the broth was still hot. She began carrying her husband hot broth and all the ingredients (meat, noodles, etc.) were added once she got to the island.Needless to say, all forms of noodles are quite popular in Mengzi. My favorite was the rabbit meat noodles that we had. And it was just great that the restaurant had pictures of fuzzy bunnies on their sign. Other than eating, we didn't do much other than relax and drink tea (one
of Kelly's friends has her own tea shop). We did take a big group picture with the family (another Chunjie tradition) and I hope to scan it and post it soon (I actually just got a copy of it yesterday). Lots of Asians and one white girl. Haha.I'll write another post about the other 3 cities (Gejiu, Jianshui, and Yuanyang) soon, but that's my recap of the actual holiday--fireworks and food. Or maybe soon-ish, as the trip was already a month ago and I haven't written it yet. Time is all relative anyway...
--
Posted By Rachelle to This is my Trail at 2/27/2009 03:52:00 AM
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