Happy Chinese New Year!

新年快乐! Xinnian kuai le! Happy Chinese New Year! Yesterday Principal Zhang, her son, and I celebrated in a village in Hangzhou. I originally wanted to go to one of teacher’s villages to celebrate, but the Tecsun CEO, Mr. Nie, arranged for us three to travel to Hangzhou to celebrate, and then go visit the company’s headquarters in Suzhou. We arrived in Hangzhou a night before Chinese New Year’s eve, and stayed at a Tecsun’s employees home which has Western style guest houses and furniture. Once we arrived we were immediately warmly welcomed with a huge banquet dinner together with his immediate family, brother’s family and us three. While his wife and sister-in-law were slaving away in the kitchen, we sat down and were immediately handed food to eat. There was dried beef, pig’s feet, pig’s tongue, fish head, steamed fish, hairy crab, fish ball soup, stewed lamb, 8-treasures rice, chicken, cucumber sprinkled with sugar, Chinese stir-fried leafy vegetables, and of course, baijiu (the Chinese firewater alcohol). I was so impressed with the amount of food as dish after dish kept on coming, and it wasn’t even Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner yet. Lunch was the same way the next day. So much food and they kept on putting more food on my plate that it bordered on force-feeding. I know, poor me eating so much delicious food.

In the afternoon, we drove around town a little bit, and walked around the village to play basketball. I noticed how much cleaner this village was compared to villages near our school in Anhui Province. There was less trash thrown into the river and on the streets. And the road was nicely paved and had level concrete. After visiting many villages in our area and seeing all the litter that each village had, I expected all villages in China to be this way. But not here. There seemed to be a few reasons why our villages were so much dirtier. According to Principal Zhang, Anhui is one of the poorer provinces in China and therefore is not governed properly or not adequately funded like other more wealthy provinces. Also, most of the villages in our area are in remote, mountain areas, where it’s hard to govern because of its distance from bigger cities. In turn, the government can not provide more services to these villages, and the idea of not littering and cleaning the environment can’t be well taught. This problem definitely stems from the way the villagers think about their environment and as parents litter, children learn to do the same thing. I just hope that Pingmin’s education will teach our students to value our environment, and in turn, they can go back to their villages and influence the people around them.

Chinese New Year’s Eve dinner was same enormous banquet but with dumplings added. Fireworks, and firecrackers banged in the background as we ate to our heart’s content. After dinner, we also lit off some fireworks, but since their house is more closed off with high walls and more separated from their neighbors, I couldn’t really see the surrounding fireworks in the sky. We then played some cards inside and watched the annual Chinese New Year celebration gala on TV. At midnight, we again lighted fireworks.

It was a good night with great food and cozy sitting space, but still wished I could have gone with a teacher to their more rural village and celebrated with them. Since this village isn’t as rural and more spaced apart, I couldn’t enjoy the real village-like atmosphere I imagined. I wanted to see a sky filled with colors and smoke, and I wanted my ears to be partially deft from firecrackers being set off every 5 seconds. I wanted to eat really traditional local foods and play ma jiang with old men drunk off baijiu. I wanted to see kids running around and being way too dangerously close to the fireworks and watch the New Years Gala on a run-down TV cuddled with villagers in a small room. You know, the "real" experience. Hopefully I will have a chance later to come back and experience this.