New Year Trip to My Home

The Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, takes place on the first day of the year based on the lunar calender, which is usually in February according to the solar calender. It is a time for family reunion and a time to remember your ancestors. It's been five years since I've been home for the holiday. I really missed the festivity of the holiday. This year, John and I happened to be in China. Even though we only had 3 days off work, we decided to fly home. John was nervous to meet my family, he won't admit that, but I can feel his tension :-) But my folks weren't too hard on him.

There were lots of new year activities. We missed the month-long food preparation part for sure. By the time we got home, my dad has already had the spring couplets up. These are the red paper on the doors with writings on them. The one on our door this year says Good Luck Everyday, Big Fortune Every Year.

There are endless meals with all sorts of food. Lots of what I would consider delicacy appears as weird food to John :-) For example, my mom got out a box of delicacy which consists of two pig tails, one pig tongue, half a pig head, a pig heart, and of course a liver. And we had to go to different relatives to eat dinner as tradition goes. My favorite aunt prepared some fried cicadas for me, and John refused to kiss me for a long time after I ate a plate of those :-)

John likes my mom's big wok to cook dumplings in. The wok also serve as a heater to heat up my concrete bed. At night my mom would leave coal in the burner so my bed would keep warm. We kept sweating the whole night. Even though my mom put layers and layers of bedding on our bed, John still got a sore back after sleeping on it for three days.

Worshiping ancestors is a big part of the festival. My grandma and John set up the worship table and put lots of food on it. My dad had to light up the incense and candles after the table's set. Then he would burn some paper money in the courtyard. Hopefully my ancestors would have a good 2008.

At midnight we got up to set off the firecrackers. John woke up and told me he had a dream that he's in Iraq because the fireworks were so freaking loud and were going on continuously throughout the night!

I hope you are not bored by now. Maybe I'll talk about more later :-)

Here's a link to more pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/HobblyJig/SherrySParentSHome2008