春节, 新年快乐!

When I first came to China (5 months ago), Julie and Mu took me to a restaurant (东北一家人) in downtown Wenzhou that had traditional food from their home region of China. For the Mid-Autumn Festival I visited an adjacent, similar restaurant (东北一家亲) with my hosts, as well as Jada and Ben, and I've wanted to go back for months.

These last few days I've eaten at both places and I actually got a little tired of it - such rich and delicious food loses its magic if you eat it three days in a row.


Besides food there have been other celebratory events. In the evening on 1/25/09 there were fireworks going off all over Wenzhou. Below is a video I took of the cityscape from Julie's balcony.



The amount of fire-power you're allowed to make use of is really astonishing:
After having dinner in the restaurant one night we stepped out and got to the opposite sidewalk in time to watch a group of kids light off a 5-meter chain of firecrackers in front of the restaurant. Small pieces of exploded material were hitting my jacket from more than 7 meters across the road, and the noise was deafeningly loud!

In our district there were boxes that each had more than 30 rocket fireworks going off, turning the apartment complex into a frightening bonanza of lights and explosions.
From the apartment of one of Julie's friends, where we were spending the last hours of the previous year and the first hours of the new year, the explosions were taking place at eye level not 15 meters from the window!


At night we watched a grand set of performances on TV that were bright, colorful, funny, and (for me at least) very, very confusing. Though I did get to see Jackie Chan sing, and for the first time I saw "Dashan", the Canadian TV personality who speaks immaculate Chinese and serves as the gold standard of all other foreigners in China.
(I'm not kidding, if you're a foreigner people will ask you if you know him).


Obeying tradition we made dumplings and ate them as part of a midnight meal. We also threw in leftovers from the many restaurant feasts. It's common practice to put some special somethings into just a few of the New Year dumplings before cooking them, so we can see what we will find in the New Year.

Here's a breakdown:
Coin = prosperity
Candy = sweetheart
Peanut = luck
(There was only one dumpling that had a coin, and only one with a candy, but several with peanuts).

I had to go through a lot of dumplings but at last I found one with something special (besides the delicious filling), it was the "sweetheart" dumpling. So it seems like I'm destined to find my sweetheart in the coming lunar year.
SWEET!

Jada shows us 文成

Mu and I went to Jada's dorm expecting to transport both her and one of her roommates to her hometown of WenCheng (文成), but said roommate was apparently too lazy to pack and so we left her - thought that was a little harsh.

On a hilltop near the main part of 文成 we saw a pagoda, and near the pagoda we found a tree that I was able to climb - if you've seen some of the pictures of me through the years you might notice that I occasionally find trees to either climb or at least sit in




...arboreal nature of ancestral humans resurfacing I suppose.




Lunch included some diverse dishes, but the most memorable (and among the best tasting) were the animal heads: duck (enough for one each) and pig (a half).











A little further out in the country we came to a temple where a tour guide tried to relate some story to me and I couldn't help but laugh at the futility of his efforts (bless his heart for trying).




Outside the temple we walked through a village and saw a group of kids. One girl among them kept following me, trying to communicate even though she spoke a dialect of 温州话 that was completely unintelligible to me.


Just beyond the temple grounds there was a lake that had been rendered a mudflat from lack of water, and one of the kids walked out there to scoop up fish using no more than his bare feet to walk and his two hands to fish.










We spent the night at Jada's uncle's house in a village far from 文成










and prepared our evening meal (and breakfast the next morning) with a woodfire stove.







He was a very welcoming host and it was a cozy slumber... a Spartan place, but nonetheless comfortable.
_______________________________________


The next day it was raining, so we (Jada, her niece, her friend, Mu and myself) went to a nearby temple, and in that time the rain stopped.

We trekked along a road past level fields that were flattened and flooded for producing rice,








and sampled some fruit that grew along the road much like how blackberries grow along the roads in the U.S.
Except this fruit was almost all seeds covered with a skin that was a lot like bark and could only be chewed for a faint flavor, not swallowed. To top it off, the fruits were coated with little thorns that had to be removed with our fingernails.

Next we hiked into a canyon/gorge that was festooned with vegetation on all sides of the (VERY) precipitous stairway (yes, stairs - no unexplored places in China anymore it seems).




We hiked down several hundred meters to the plungepool of one waterfall, and then another. We would've gone for the third but we were pretty tired by then. We circled around behind the second waterfall where it had gouged a large passageway from the rock and proceeded to climb out again.


...not an easy feat when it's past noon, you've gone about four hours without food, brought no water with you, and are in a place where physical exercise produces sweat that chills you to the bone.




On the way back out we walked up and over several peaks that all had names - one in particular was easy to name because it had such an anthropomorphic quality to its structure. It was called "General's Peak" because it looks like a soldier with a helmet.


After climbing several hundred of some of the steepest stairs I've ever seen (which I didn't bother taking the time to photograph - such was my desire to be done with them) we at last reached the end of the climb sometime past 14:00 and after walking back to a nearby village we stopped at their convenience store and bought a bunch of instant noodles, pears and a couple eggs and got permission to use the family's own kitchen in the back of the shop to make some lunch.

While I sat waiting for Mu to prepare lunch (no one lets me help) I watched a chicken come into the room, sit in a box on top of a table in a corner, and after a few seemingly furtive minutes, stand up again, peck at something on the table, and leave.
I discovered an egg had been lain in the box it had sat in, and the object it had pecked at was a dead rabbit.

...full of wonder this place is.

Out the other night

The teachers of 瓯江 College get together for a big dinner at the end of the semester and the start of the new year, so that was where I went on Saturday night. I sat with Helen Yang, who invited me to her home and took me to dinner within the first few days of living in 温州. I proposed a toast at two tables that evening which impressed some people and all-in-all I had a good time.
...although at the beginning I went with Helen to explore the hotel (we thought there might be a wedding reception) and there were whole tables of people in that dining room that were staring at me - if you never felt self-conscious in America, I invite you to China - wow.

Yesterday I went to Julie's place with Mu and Benja Clarke's family. We made dumplings and watched Small Soldiers and Kung Fu Panda. Of course, once those movies were over we had to deal with 3+ hours of pent-up energy from a three year old and a six year old, so dealing with all of that was an interesting experience.
Ben's plan for the vacation is to take the family to 湖北 province for about a month and spend his time practicing Kung Fu at 武当山, the mountain from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Daoist equivalent of 嵩山: home of the Shaolin Temple (少林寺).

Meanwhile I'm still not sure about 哈尔滨, how I'm getting there, where I'm staying and all that, but the time draws close when I will have to make a decision. I think I'll go during the week of my birthday, see it for a few days, then come back before the new term starts.

I also discovered something about my age according to the Chinese lunar calendar. I was born February 5, 1986 - 3 days before the start of the lunar new year. In China that means that as of February 8, 1986 I could be thought of as 2 (I had been alive in 2 lunar years). Which means that right now (mid-January 2009) I can safely claim to be 24, about to turn 25.

In one of the Chinese classes I was taking the students opted to have their final exam at the beginning of next semester. So I now have the opportunity/burden of being able to prepare for this test, to see how I measure up to the other students. Time to hit the books.

I'm nearly finished with the last of my work now - just need to finish handwriting my class evaluations (just a matter of transcription) and then turn it all in to the secretary.

Today (星期一) is the day it will be finished!

新年

...and I forgot my camera.

Unfortunately when I got up this morning and went to campus to catch the bus into the city I forgot to grab my camera, thus I have no pictures to go with the story I have.

This morning was cold, but not freezing, and there was a fair amount of direct sunlight, so that helped makes us all feel warm later on.
The run lasted a little over half an hour, we ran as an ordered column, about eight across, teachers and students totaling somewhere close to 50. As with a lot of things I was the only foreigner involved, but it was a nice way to start the new year, running early in the morning, spending some time with my colleagues, seeing more of the city I know so little about... I think this year is off to a good start.

All of the staff from Oujiang were wearing identical clothes: dark navy blue sweatshirts and sweatpants with some white along the arms.
After the run I went to 绣山公园 above the 市政府 and climbed the hill with Faye. We were accompanied by piano music coming out of these green-painted stones...

I made a comment about how anyone who heard that story in America would think I was trippin' at this moment... I wasn't.

At the top of the hill we came across a set of triplets, two of whom had the same blue long-sleeves and inner white-wool, outer denim vest. The third one, who had a face more gaunt than his brothers, wore an ivory colored coat.

We walked from the park to the 科技博物馆 (Science museum) I was kind of happy to learn that I do sort of know my own separate language – science.
The museum was quite large and was fairly empty, but there were some interesting things of note:
- an exhibit of ancient Chinese machines for measuring the heavens and earthquakes,
- another exhibit that showed the flow of electricity as it affected water in tubes surrounded by copper wires
- and a lot of placards about the recent space launch - one of the pictures depicted an astronaut with a glove that I SWEAR showed "six fingers on his right hand"...

...where's someone who knows Inigo Montoya when I have such a great setup?


All in all it was a good way to start the New Year.