Nathaniel and Sheree back in Australia

Before I start telling you about our Chinese New Year. Here are the photos. Unfortunately most of the photos were on Mum’s Camera and I forgot to get a copy before she went back to Thailand. I’ll try to upload some more later on.

For those of you that don’t know the Chinese have a lunisolar calendar which means that the Chinese New Year isn’t the 31stof December. Chinese New Year generally happens sometime in February and in China it’s a big deal, a REALLY big deal.

For the whole month everything goes a little bit crazy (like Christmas in Australia but with 1 billion people). Here are some of the things that happen:

• Almost all the Chinese get to take a 9 day holiday BUT 4 ofthose days are weekends and they have to work the entire weekend before the holiday, so they only really 3 days off but if you try to explainthat to them they’ll adamantly say they get 9 days off.
• Many part time employees take the entire month off.Lots of English schools shut down for the whole month.
• Virtually everyone goes home.
• There are virtually no cars in Beijing and most of the pollution goes away as well.
• They start selling fireworks 3 days before Chinese New Year and lots of Chinese people spend up to a months salary on Fireworks and food for the banquets.
• On Chinese New Year the fireworks start going off as soon as it gets dark and by midnight they are constantly going off in every direction.
• The fireworks keep going for the next 2 weeks.
• It’s traditional to make Jiaozi (dumplings) during Chinese New Year.

This Chinese New Year was extra special because my Parents and Daniel decided to visit us (after having some problems with their visas). Here is a breakdown of what we did:

• Tuesday – Sheree picked them up from the airport and then took them to the Great Wall with some of our friends from Yizhuang.
• Wednesday - We all went to Longqing Xia to see the Ice Festival with some of my friends from work. On Wednesday night we let off about $200 worth of fireworks (We carried them all around in a suitcase) at 10pm then went back to the apartment on the 9th floor to watch the fireworks till about 1am.
• Thursday – We relaxed and got a massage at the hair dresser. We were going to go chair skating but they had already packed up for the year
• Friday – We were going to go to the Pearl Market but it was closed fortunately the Toy Market behind it wasn’t closed
• Saturday – I went Skiing with Daniel while everyone else relaxed at home. We took a bus there and back unfortunately whenwe tried to catch the bus back to Beijing it was full so we jumped in a van with about seven other people. I had no idea were we were going but the lady next to me was going to Beijing as well so I figured if we followed her we’d make it back. In the end we found out that the van was going to the first bus stop so we were able to get on the bus and make it back to Beijing.
• Sunday - We didn’t do much on Sunday apart from say goodbye and send Mum, Dad and Dano off to the airport.

Overall Chinese New Year was a lot of fun. It was great catching up with my parents although I did neglect Sheree a bit that week (I tried to make up for it the next week).