Greetings all once again,
This time I write you fresh off of a marathon of posts yesterday trying to get caught up and now I think I'm about there! Always better to stay current and not get behind..but sometimes "life" happens...and aren't we glad it does!
January/February here in China brings in the New Lunar Calendar which many Asian countries celebrate (not only China). We've lived here almost 4 years and I still don't know all the ins and outs of the calendar, but our experience is that the weather patterns in that calendar are quite accurate and I think the Almanac is based on this calendar. Here in northeastern China, it's cold this time of year...but this year it has not been as cold as the other winters (until you get out in it after dark!)
This is the 1st year we have actually stayed in Shenyang for the beginning of the Chinese New Year (they call it Spring Festival here). Among other traditions, the beginning of the Chinese New year is brought in by fireworks...and lots of them! As many of you have seen on the news reports, the pollution in China has been particularly bad this year..and so the government has requested not to have so many fireworks this year to keep the smoke down. We did notice less fireworks, but still lots of explosions over the city over the past week! I didn't take pictures...fireworks look the same the world over and pictures of fireworks never do them justice!
One of the other big cultural things is for all the Chinese people to visit and have meals with family during these 5 days. Many people travel from member to member, making dumplings and other special foods then sharing them together and exchanging gifts (sounds alot like Christian Christmas doesn't it?) This year, since we were here in Shenyang, we were invited to our Chinese family home to share int the dumplings and gift exchange. We have known this family for the whole time we have been here, so we were very blessed to be invited to their home once again. They really have adopted us!
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| Rod and Sarah enjoying a meal at the Zou's for Chinese New Year |
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| Sarah and Jing Jia (mama) |
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| Sarah, Daisy (Zoe Min), her mother and father |
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| Sarah with the Jade Carved Phoenix gift from the Zoe family |
They gave me a very special gift...and you may have seen in the previous posts, the project on which I've been working is named Phoenix. The Phoenix is the symbol of the empress of China and is a mythical bird. This family knows this and has made it their mission to give me all things Phoenix! This year, they found a jade carved Phoenix and I must say it is exquisite.
Again the picture does not do it justice and you can't really make out the bird (except the legs), but imagine it's walking to the right and looking back over it's shoulder with wings almost in flight. The round disk in the background is the sun and the different color green base is a bed of carved lotus flowers. This piece will be in my art collection until I die !
Hard to top that!
After the feasting and time with family, there is also a the lantern lightings and looking at the Spring festival lights. When it's cold, they use the weather to their advantage and make ice sculptures and of course, light them up! On the pedestrian street, not far from where we live, they have lanterns and ice scuptures all along the street, so we went to check it out and here are a few pictures of that evening!
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| Rod in his winter gear standing in front of a big Chinse lantern on the pedestian shopping street (Tai Yuan Jie) at Spring Festival in Shenyang |
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| Lots of lanterns on the shopping street |
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| Rod and Sarah on the Tai Yuan Jie |
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| Sarah on the Merry Go Round on the Tai Yuan Jie at Spring Festival |
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| Rod on the Merry Go Round |
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| Rod brings in the year of the Horse |
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| More lanterns on the Tai Yuan Jie |
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| Rod sitting on his icy thrown on the Tai Yuan Jie |
Since the Lantern lighting started yesterday (2 Feb 2014), The Zoe's invited us out to a park outside of Shenyang called Qi Pan Shan (in the winter it's an ice park, in the winter it's a botanical garden! So that we could see the full effect of the lights, we went at dusk and dark...Rod elected not to go on this trip, so it was a girls night out with me, Daisy and her mother Jing Jie.
First the lanterns. There is a mock-up old city outside of Shenyang right beside the Qi Pan Shan area that was built as a replica of another old pedestrian street (Zhong Jie) that is used for movie sets etc. It is decorated this time of year with thousands of lanterns (wire figurines of all types and sizes..some huge, covered with cloth and lit from within). It's quite a show at night!
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| The entrance to the 'old city' at dusk before the lights go on. |
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| One of the lanterns before it gets dark as seen from below |
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| Sarah on the old 'middle street' just as the lights start to come on |
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| Gotta have a dragon! |
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| A hose dancing on the moo and other stuff! |
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| It's the year of the horse..so gotta have some horses! |
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| Ushering in 2014 in Shenyang |
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| Some of the small lanterns around the entrance |
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| A couple of big fans all lit up! |
So, this was just a few of the lanterns at the lantern festival...right next door was the snow and ice sculptures...so off we went! (after a short break in the car to get warmed up!). This ice park is no where near the size the ice park in the city of Harbin...where you might have seen the big International Ice festival advertised...I plan to go there in a couple of weeks...so I took this as a dry run for how to dress...it taught me I need better gloves!
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| Daisy at the ice park..neon tubes inside the big ice cubes really put on a show! |
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| An Ice tower |
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| Sarah and Daily at the ice park |
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| More ice park creations |
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| Sarah and Jing Jia having a seat on the ice sofa |
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| JIng Jie and Sarah with the ice city behind |
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| Daisy having fun on the ice slide |
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| Sarah also having fun on ice slide |
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| Daisy and her mom at the ice park |
So, that's about it now...I'm all caught up on the blog...now the challenge will be to keep it current!
Thanks for all your prayers, thoughts and encouragement..we'll soon be celebrating our 4 year anniversary here at the end of March...seems almost not possible, but the passports do not lie!
Until next time,
Sarah & Rod from Shenyang, China
