Spring Festival I

I had heard about the existence of “Chinese New Year” over the years, but only recently did I learn that it’s also called Spring Festival, and only last weekend did I learn how big a deal it is in China.

As with Easter and Passover, the date varies from year to year. Thanks to Wikipedia, I now know that all three holidays are related to both the moon and the timing of either the equinox or the solstice.

For the nerds among us:

Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox.

From Wikipedia: “Passover begins on the 15th day of the month of Nisan, which corresponds to the full moon of Nisan, the first month of the Hebrew calendar, in accordance with the Hebrew Bible. Passover is a spring festival, so the 14th of Nisan begins on the night of a full moon after the vernal equinox.”

From Wikipedia again: “In the Gregorian calendar, Chinese New Year falls on different dates each year, a date between January 21 and February 20. In the Chinese calendar, winter solstice must occur in the 11th month, which means that Chinese New Year usually falls on the second new moon after the winter solstice (rarely the third if an intercalary month intervenes).”

This year, the Chinese New Year began on Sunday, February 14. Saturday was therefore New Year’s eve. Being lucky enough to be here for this holiday season, I have had long delicious feasts with two sets of extended families, where Jamie and I were welcomed to join festivities with grandparents, in-laws, and kids of various ages. It’s fun to see different customs and to eat Chinese food that is almost nothing like what we call “Chinese food” in the US. Around here mutton is a staple, though I don’t think that would be true in other parts of China. In the meal we just had at Miss Ji’s place, downstairs from Jamie, I was told that mutton was something they had all the time, whereas the “Beijing Duck” was special for the holiday feast.

Lots of people are taken aback by the fact that Jamie didn’t go to his family for the holidays. Spring Festival is in that respect like Christmas for us, but more so. It seems like every last Chinese person on earth tries to go/come home for the holiday. The kids get 40 days off from school, there seemed to be enough fireworks just in Yulin to supply the entire US on the Fourth of July, and the celebrating lasts for six days, during which time everyone is on vacation.

On Saturday, New Year’s Eve, Jamie and I were invited to the home of his colleague Liu Yanfeng, who spent some months in Readfield as an AFS teacher 5 or 6 years ago, and who was the connection through whom Jamie found his job. Yanfeng is married and has a daughter, JiaoJiao, who is eight years old by our measure. By Chinese measure, she’s nine. Here, you are “1” on the day you are born. Then, everyone gets a year older on New Year’s day. So a baby born the day before the New Year would be “2” after being alive for a day or two.

It makes perfect sense to them. ;)

We went to Yanfeng’s house in the late morning and had a lovely lunch. There was a soup packed with several kinds of meat, some noodles and vegies, and other things that as usual I couldn’t identify. Very tasty. There were also steamed dumplings (pork filling, something like you can get in Chinese restaurants at home), plus some doughnut-shaped things that were made with millet meal. I ate several of these and loved them.

After lunch we talked. I had brought some books for JiaoJiao, and she looked at them for a long time. One of the them was about Helen Keller, and I learned that Chinese children learn all about Helen Keller and that she is very well-known in China. Later, JiaoJiao read to me from her English textbook. Her English pronunciation is really good and she is quick to pick up new things. She also danced for us, and that was fun too.

Eventually Yanfeng’s brother picked us up to go to their parents’ house for the rest of the day’s celebrations. There we met Yanfeng’s parents, the brother’s wife and child (16 months old, named TongTong), and also Yanfeng’s sister and her husband and son. Several of these people spoke at least a little English, so I was able to talk to them a bit without Jamie having to translate every exchange.

TongTong cried when we walked into the house. She was shy, we were strangers. The houses aren’t kept all that warm, so she was wearing warm clothes that made her look as round as she was tall. Eventually she got less shy, until she was willing to stand between where Jamie and I were sitting on the couch and to play with us a bit. At one point she dropped something on the floor and I said, “uh-oh,” and she immediately imitated it and then kept saying “uh-oh” for the rest of the day. She also referred to me by the word for “grandma” or “old lady.” Perceptive kid. ;)

Dinner was served on a little table in the front room of the apartment. There were couches and chairs pulled up around the table, and Jamie and I were repeatedly urged to sit down and start eating. When we first came in there were snacks, then Yanfeng’s mother and the other cooks (it seemed to be a joint enterprise) brought in one dish at a time until there were at least a dozen different things to choose from. Yanfeng said that we should eat, because it’s not the custom in China for everyone to wait til everyone else has food, or til all the food is served. Once again I have no idea what some of the dishes were, but there was a huge beautiful bowl with a whole fish in it (steamed, I think), there were a couple of dishes that were mostly meat (including lamb), and there were several kinds of vegies and mixed dishes. I tried everything and loved several of the dishes to the point of asking for the recipe for one of them (bits of pork, cilantro, something like scallions, other green vegies, garlic, I don’t know what else). My least favorite was lamb, but that’s nothing new.

The custom is for everyone to pick food out of the common bowls with chopsticks. You put your food into your own little bowl, on top of rice if you’ve taken some rice. People pick around in the dishes to find the nicest bits, and people do keep eating a little at a time for a long, long time. Yanfeng’s father, who didn’t say two words the whole day, several times offered food to Jamie and me, making sure we tried the specialties. He would pick something up with his chopsticks and hold it out to us, and I think it would have been rude to refuse. I did end up leaving some of my lamb in my bowl, but no one commented on that.

We were offered wine, beer, tea, soda, and water. I had tea and water. After the meal was over and the table was cleared, at a time when Jamie was outside doing fireworks (I truly will get to the fireworks eventually), I was asked if I wanted some “millet wine.” They said it wasn’t really wine and wasn’t alcoholic, so I said I’d try a bit. It was yellow, sort of creamy, served in a bowl, a bit sweet, a bit tangy, and fermented in some way. I didn’t mind it but didn’t like it enough to finish my bowl (which was quite a bit more than a tiny bit).

Later in the evening there was Mah-Jong, and eventually we went outside to set off fire crackers of various kinds. But that’s another installment.