(Chinese) New Year's Eve...
We hosted a little get together for some neighborhood families, mostly expats, since chinese generally spend that night with family. With kids outnumbering adults at most of our gatherings these days, it was a little wild, but very fun!
- Alex took the big girls out to pick out some fireworks. The boxes on their right are the ones they wanted to purchase. They cost about 1000rmb ($150) and in the United States would require some sort of license to use.
These are the kind of fireworks the girls ended up purchasing:
Along with tons of sparklers and fountains.
Then it was off to buy fruit.
These fruit stores were literally spilling out onto the streets. I've never seen so much fruit!
On their way into our apartment building they saw our neighbor burning money (a tradition...it is paper bills made to look like money)....
Wendy gasped and said 'Daddy, that lady is worshipping false gods'. One of the sad realities of the holiday is that it really has a lot of roots in ancestor worship.
Sorry no photos of Jiaozi Dinner. Between cooking it up and serving the dozen kids plus adults, I didn't have a whole lot of time to grab my camera. I did catch some pictures of the kids doing fireworks in the yard.
Some of the kids. Vera has a lit sparkler there in her hand. She made sure to keep a lit one in her hand all night.
Handing out more sparklers:
Wendy with hers...and yes, it really was that smoky outside from all the fireworks! The headline in the papers the next day was "Pollution soars after fireworks: Calls for greener celebrations as air pollutants 5 times safe level."
And finally, Geneva with her (unlit) sparklers.
Fountains:
Alex did purchase some bigger ones and set them off in the parking lot next to our apartment. I couldn't seem to get the camera to get a picture of the fireworks going off, but here is everyone watching him set them off from a safe distance in our yard!
After fireworks, we went inside and the guys played cards in the basement room while the kids watched the old Disney movie 'Pete's Dragon' in honor of this year, the Year of the Dragon!
Then the little one's headed to bed.
But here is the midnight crew, trying to stay awake!
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On New Year's Day we had more Jiaozi at a friend's home. Here are the girls and their little friend ZaiZai.
It was really a fun holiday. And the great news is that it lasts for 14 days! More photos to come of what else we've been up to on our long holiday here in Shanghai.
Happy New Year!
1 comment:
so fun to see a glimpse into your life! and, totally random, but bree has the same pink leopard print jammies as wj does. :o).
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