Xin Nian Kuai Le

Yesterday, Matt & I spent our day trying to adhere to some local Chinese customs in order to bring good luck to 2013. Here’s an outline of some of what we did:

Cleaned our apartment: Cleaning out your home, “sweeps away the bad luck” that has accumulated over the past year, and makes the home ready for good luck to enter again. A fresh start! (Over the following 15 days, we’re relieved of cleaning duties because we don’t want to wipe away the good luck!)

Decorated our home: Red decorations in little places around our home welcoming in the good luck for the year. Also, placed mandarins throughout the house. In Chinese the word for “gold” and “orange” sound alike, and tangerine “echoes luck.” If they have leaves, even better, because the leaves symbolize longevity.

Wear red underwear: to ward off bad luck. (I actually knew about this one from the Kaw family!) Check!

Exchanged "Hong Bao":  literally translates to “red envelopes”. Typically, these are given from adults to children, but instead Matt & I just gave to each other. We asked for the envelopes from each other by saying “Xin Nian Kuai Le. Hong Bao Na Lai” à Happy New Year! Give me a red envelope!  Envelopes are filled with cash, in the numbers ending in “8”, again for good luck.

Cooked a dinner filled with Chinese tradition foods: Here is the recipe I was working with (http://www.steamykitchen.com/4997-broccoli-beef-noodle-stir-fry.html ), but as mentioned in the previous post, I didn’t find all the ingredients so we ended up with a slightly different take ala Chez Jacqueline. (No oyster sauce, No chicken broth, No sake, No Chinese broccoli)

 - Long noodles: Keep them as long as possible for long life.

 - Long beans: Wish a long life for parents. (eventhough we couldn’t be together we were thinking about everyone!)

 - Cauliflower: Looks like a blossoming flower to represent blossoming prosperous new year.

 - Cookies: Sweets brings sweet life for the new year.

Wishing everyone a new year filled with good fortune!

Pics of our freshly cleaned apartment. 

Master Bedroom: with best down comforter courtesy of Grandmother & Art! Keeps us warm when our heater is iffy.

Guest Room: We are open & ready for visitors!!!! Who's going to be the first?

Guest bath / Matt's bath: Key to a successful marriage is separate bathrooms. :)

 Master Bath.

Little kitchen. Matt did a great job cleaning today! Cooking here is challenging without all the right supplies... 

Red lantern decorations

Our Hong Bao envelopes and good luck tangerines / mandarins

88 RMB! I'm super lucky.

Chinese New Year dinner... I have no platters, so while my intention was good to provide a nice presentation, I quickly realized that the beef & cauliflower was sliding off my noodles. Two plates it is!

Slightly better presentation.

Matt slurping his long noodles. No biting/cutting as we don't want to cut off our longevity!

 Red underwear! :)

Chinese New Year's Eve!

Shanghai comes ALIVE on Chinese New Year's Eve! What a spectacle! 

The night is best experienced in photos as it's difficult to put into words... but I'll try my best.  

Here's the quick synopsis (but friends, feel free to add / comment!) : Chinese New Year's Eve is the start of the Chinese Spring Festival, which lasts 15 days. It's about a belief in good fortune and a chance to start out the new year on the right foot with family and friends.

The "warnings" we received: 1. Everyone leaves town & the city will be empty... but what does that mean?!?! 2. The temple area will be PACKED with millions of Chinese celebrating, 3. The fireworks last all night. Now, it was out turn to figure out what this all really means, and I can assure you that the fireworks part is 150% true. 

It took some time researching to figure out where to go and what to do on the New Year's Eve, but first we headed back to the Yuyuan Gardens / City Temple of God to see the preparations for the ceremony. We were prepared for packed squares and the need to arrive early to see anything. We read online the ceremony was from 9:30pm - 12:30am, so we were aiming to arrive at 8pm, as we are experienced NYC parade goers. However, we were shocked with how empty the area was (although this was consistent with the deserted feel of our own neighborhood). Now, I'm certain we missed out on something, but the square made for some great photos!!! 

Then we were off to a 10pm dinner reservation with a view on The Bund to checkout the fireworks displays. The Bund was definitely more populated with locals, visiting Chinese and plenty of Expats. The food was delicious as was the view. This is where you really see the city come to life at night. It's what postcards are made of. 

The true highlight of the night was the unbelievable display of fireworks. From our dinner view on The Bund, to the taxi ride home and to our own home balcony, there were fireworks on display at every single turn. Supposedly, there is no "government sanctioned" fireworks display, they are EVERYWHERE. The displays are set off by families, apartment complexes, anyone really. It was wild! While the crescendo was at midnight, they started before we left around 7pm and continued well into 2am in the morning. It was WILD!!!!!

Happy Chinese New Year!!!

Back to Yuyuan! Year of the Snake!

Walk across the "9 Turn Bridge" said to bring good luck when you walk across as the evil spirits can't follow you across the 9 zig-zags.

 

a walk along The Bund, pre-dinner

cocktails at Glamour Bar

View from dinner at New Heights on The Bund (delicious)

FIREWORKS!!! This is pics of firework displays all over the city on our taxi ride home, including a show in our apartment complex courtyard.

Video at midnight from our balcony. Sounded like the city was exploding!

Adventures in Grocery Shopping

Quick post today: my naive grocery shopping experience. 

This weekend is the start of the Chinese New Year holiday (think Christmas / New Year's holiday in the US), so we decided to load up on groceries since we aren't sure what will be open. Some friends suggested we head to Carrefour as they have the best prices and Western products. I've been to a Carrefour in Europe and I know they adapt their offering to the current market. However, based on the vague description of "having Western products" I naively assumed that their target market was predominantly Western foreigners with some Asian offerings thrown in. 

I was wrong. This is a Chinese grocery store. One aisle of "imported food", you know like the one aisle in American stores called "International." I feel their pain...

I walked down into the large Carrefour store and was stunned by all my senses: sights / smells / sounds. Every inch of space was filled with people, items for purchase, signs, etc. Now I realized I was definitely not properly prepared for this. We had a list of about 30 different items, but no idea where to start. For example, sugar. Sounds simple enough... Imagine 3 different aisles all with offerings of white powder in plastic bags, written in Chinese symbols... uhhh... sugar? salt? flour? baking soda? something not American altogether? Oh, it also took me about an hour to find these aisles that I think were in a "cooking section" Obviously, right next to the full aisle of soy sauce offerings.

Additionally, some items were translated into "English", but really just the roman alphabet. I'm pretty sure I purchase cauliflower, but the label said "cài huā"  There was also a good deal of things that we don't see in our stores back home... dried fish, dried full chickens, bins full of rice, butchers in open aisles.

Matt met me here off work and his first comment was "this is a cluster..." 

After about an hour and a half I think we left there only missing a five things. A serious accomplishment! (Oh, but that's after we had to go through the checkout line twice because I didnt realize you had to get all of your fruit & veggies weighed & ticketed back in the produce section. That was a hilarious explanation. We are ready to try again!

Oh, and it's snowing here! And tomorrow is Chinese New Year's Eve!!!

Pics don't do justice to this experience... Signs galore

"Dried" section: fruits / fish / meat / anything really

 Dried chickens

View into the produce section (from more dried fruit section)

RICE! ... I see how it's a staple...

This is only a 3rd of the soy sauce aisle (well I think it was all soy sauce)

Inside out corn dogs? (I'm sure there were other strange items, but I could read this one. :) )

 Snow! This is our courtyard area of our apartment. Might be hard to tell but I promise it's snowing. :)