Wayward Anneke: (Our Attempt At) A Chinese Chinese New Year

A night to behold with a whole lot of lead- up

NEW YEAR PREPARATIONS

We made our poor students create an entire presentation on Chinese New Year and filmed it. That way, us foreign teachers learned more about it while they learned how to talk about it in English. Ahh making children suffer for a good cause.

Then they taught us how to make dumplings! It's an intricate process of folding, squeezing, pressing, and arranging

Then we went "skiing" in an indoor ski hill. It was a 10-foot sloped treadmill with white grass-mat and we wore t-shirts. For Chinese New Year. I don't even know (at least we didn't have to pay for it).

When life gives you lemons, push children down tiny inverted treadmills pretending to be snowhills

ALL ALONE

Students and Chinese coworkers went home to their families for the new year celebrations, leaving the two laowais (foreigners) to fend for themselves in the world’s 2^nd largest city during its most important holiday of the year. QUITE exciting.

This meant learning how to shop for ourselves in a foreign grocery store. They had really cute bananas.

We visited Qibao village, which is a beautiful, preserved older town that was all decorated for the celebrations.

Laundry hanging from balcony stands.

I finally tried the infamous "black burger" at McDonald's!!! It's actually not bad - it's a chicken burger and it's black because it's a sesame burger (I'm pretty sure)

All the people! Some streets in downtown Shanghai were almost entirely dead, which is extremely rare, because everyone left the city to be with their families (it is, after all, the most important Chinese holiday).

Some lanterns spread over an older street in the city

Wandering through the half-deserted city of Shanghai.

However, the more culturally significant places were absolutely packed with people. It felt like leaving a giant theatre after a show, but everywhere.

All the people crowded in the older area of town. The entire street was line-up just to walk down the road.

And a 40-ft blow-up dog (Year of the Dog) towering above us all.

LONGHUA TEMPLE

On the actual night of New Year's Eve, Fahim (the other foreign teacher) and I decided to go to Longhua Temple. Every year, 40 monks ring a giant bell 142 times. Watching it in Shanghai is sort of the equivalent of watching the ball drop in New York City.

However, on the way there, something happened I never dreamed would happen to me. While running to catch the subway, a felt something tumble out of my pocket. Turning back, Fahim stared gasping at the crack between the subway door and the platform. My cell phone had tumbled through!! My cell phone... holding all of our contact numbers, directions, translator apps, photos, and basically everything else we needed. Since Fahim's cell phone was dead, we were literally stranded without it.

Desperately, we raced to the Metro Information Desk to find they spoke absolutely no English. We played charades and through in the occasional Mandarin word we knew (literally just "cell phone is" and "not good"). The Help Desk woman drew us pictures to ask which door it was and, eventually, we were back on the subway platform with two men in bright red service uniforms.

"Hello!" said one of the servicemen with a giant smile and almost-robotic tone, "You should not be worried today. We will assist you. You mustn't to be afraid. Only happy." They had clearly called in their English-speaker. We thanked them profusely, guilty about our "extreme foreignness" and causing a hassle, as well as ever-growing crowd of people. The serviceman pulled out a massive stick with a claw on the end, waited for the subway to arrive and then leave again, then use the time in between trains to open the door and pull the phone out. As the phone made its way back onto the platform and into my waiting hands, a small applause made its way around our tiny crowd. It was very embarrassing.

Back on the train, we did eventually make it to Longhua Temple! Leaving out the specifics of how we actually got into the temple grounds, we'll just say it quite spectacular.

While it was extremely costly to enter the actual room where the monks strike the bell, they were visible through a window from the rear parking lot. Peering through the glass, we could see the monks lined up serenely in front of the bell, which was directly in front of us. Why hadn't more people discovered this window???

New Year decorations inside the temple grounds; red is a symbol of good luck

Hundreds of people holding giant incense sticks and standing around a massive Buddha statue. In the opposite direction, the giant temple entrance is visible.

After midnight, people threw their incense sticks into these giant bonfires that popped up all over the place

I think this room needs a couple more Buddhas

LANTERN FESTIVAL

The last day of the first lunar month is the Lantern Festival. While this was after my backpacking trip to Vietnam (the next blog post), I'm putting it here because it relates to Chinese New Year.

On the night of the Lantern Festival, I made my way to the Yu Gardens, aka Shanghai's primary "old city" where the traditional festivities tend to be bigger. There were some lovely lanterns and a LOT of people (again). Since the official holiday was finished, most people home for the holidays had returned to the city, making it with excitement again. So for a street specifically known for traditional festivities... it was even more packed.

Lantern Festival lights and decorations

There were gates set up through the streets to keep traffic flowing. It was crazy.

ZHUJIAJIAO

Even though it was after both the holiday and Lantern Festival finished, it worth posting some photos of Melissa (another teacher) and my Sunday excursion to Zhujiajiao. It's a small water city outside Shanghai but has essentially been amalgamated into the larger city. While unfortunate that large cities tend to "swallow up" larger ones, it sure made it convenient to have the Shanghai subway bring us all the way to this lovely water town.