Happy New Year - Chinese Version

A long overdue post, but one still fresh in my memory.

Chinese New Years in China is almost too much for words. It starts about two weeks before the actual Lunar New Year, with fireworks going off at all hours. The displays are typically noisemakers, but occasionally you get the aerial rockets that make pretty flowers in the sky. Vendors sell large packs of fireworks on street corners, and without any licenses or authorization, you or I can buy professional grade fireworks for cheap. The city doesn't have many regulations regarding when or how you can set them off, so some days the explosions would go on until 2:00am, sounding like a war zone outside my bedroom window.

There were two days of "crazy-go-nuts" fireworks on the actual New Year's Eve and the final day that fireworks were allowed to be burned. I took videos and will upload them sometime soon, but it was nothing like I've ever seen. Everywhere I looked there were beautiful, colorful starbursts all across the city. The horizon glittered as you could hear the firecrakers explode in the streets below. In the mornings, the streets were empty save for the remnants of burnt offerings and casings all over the place. When work resumed at the Consulate, mornings were filled with the sounds of explosions from the surrounding neighborhood. Supposedly the sound of the fireworks is supposed to scare off any remaining spirits from the previous year, thus giving people a reason to set them off whenever they feel like it. All I know is that by the end of it all, I was tired of hearing fireworks at all! Fourth of July will never be the same.

In the past few weeks, I've kept myself pretty occupied between doing activities at home (reading, knitting, cooking, baking bread) and with friends (going out to clubs, parks, massage parlors, restaurants). I've gone to a few events at the CGR that have been fun, including a baby shower for one of the EFMs and a Mexican food night with the Liaoning Basketball athletic trainer. There are plans in the works to visit the local Beiling Park this weekend and in the future, we'd like to do some skiing/snowboarding at one of the nearby parks. I'm registering for the Great Wall Marathon, to be held in May, and I've started back up with my running training for that. Things are going smoothly -- you can assume that the lack of posts means that life is keeping me busy, for sure!