Xīnnián kuàilè!

So the Chinese New Year has come and gone which means it is back to work as usual, but without giving an account of the biggest holiday in China would make me a bad traveler of China.  Chinese New Year doesn’t fall on the same day of the Gregorian calendar but instead the same day of the lunar calendar. It is now the year of the Goat according to the Chinese zodiac signs.  There are 12 different animals (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, pig) that each one has a year for that particular animal.  The origin of these animals is folk lore and so there are various different stories but pretty much all the stories have a couple things in common.  Each story had some sort of race and these twelve animals were the first ones to complete the race. 

The holiday in China is known as Spring Festival and it does involve various different activities over about 23 days.  Typically there are about seven official days off according to the government starting right around the actual day of the New Year.  During this time almost everyone is off of work and goes home for the festivities.  Going home does mean heading to smaller villages outside of the major metropolitan areas.  This phenomenon has led to the largest human migration in the world that happens every year and even has a word for this migration: ‘Chunyun.’

 

Before the actual holiday there is some preparations that needs to happen for it to be a good year.  Cleaning their homes is definitely a part of this process.  Also decorating the home for the festival is extremely important.  Red posters are posted up on doors with poetic verses on the posters.  Also hanging up lanterns is a common thing to do, especially in the north. This decorating isn’t just for the house but also around the city.  Before the holiday began my city did hang up stuff around the public squares and in some trees that lined a couple of the roads.

 

People try to be home for Spring Festival Eve because this is an important night.  Since everyone is home a big meal is prepared.  Then this is the night that everyone stays up till midnight waiting for the New Year to roll in and when that happens everyone can hear it. Just today around noon, I heard some fireworks going off right outside my window.  No it isn’t Chinese News Years anymore but having fireworks go off in the middle of the day is quite common in China.  They usually are celebrating something but it doesn’t have to be that big of a celebration; however, on New Year’s Eve there are tons of fireworks that go off.  It was so many that after ten minutes all I could see was smoke and no more fireworks.  Here anyone can shoot fireworks and there isn’t really a big show put on by the city or anything of that nature.

 

On the first day of the New Year it is simply a party all day long.  I heard up in Jining (I was down south in Yangshou) near a big public park there were a lot of carnival type games and activities.  I didn’t see anything like that down in Yangshou.  I think it still is a day to catch up with family and old hometown friends.  One thing that most people do up north is to eat dumplings on New Year’s Day.  While in Yangshou I was able to make some dumplings on New Year’s Eve at the hostel I was staying for the night.  It is harder than it looks to make but they turned out pretty good.   Another item to eat on New Year’s is some sort of fish. With the fish dish though you aren’t supposed to finish it and instead leave some.  This is because the word for fish ‘yu’ also could mean ‘surplus.’ These words have different Chinese characters but are pronounced the same which happens quite a bit in Chinese.     

One neat thing that I was able to see that doesn’t happen all over was a lion dance.  I showed one of my Chinese co-workers pictures and she said that she had never seen a lion dance.  These individuals carried around two longer costumes that looked like a lion.  Two people were under the lion at one time and they would move together to make it do some actions that a lion does.  Meanwhile a cart was following the lions and was being played along with some cymbals. These two lions would dance in front of a store eventually making their way into a store until the climax of the music would happen and then both lions would bow. Next they would make their way out of that shop and go into every single shop doing the same type of music beat and with the bowing.  This whole performance is to pray for good luck and good fortune for that store.  This is because the lion is an animal that is believed to bring good luck.

   

With the holiday being so long (around 23 days) there are different things that need to happen on specific days.  I don’t know that much detail about the rest of these days and besides it is smaller days because most people are back at work after about seven days off.  One of these days that I will talk about that was real neat to participate and see it first hand is Lantern Festival.  The Lantern Festival occurs on the first full moon of the New Year.  New Year itself is on a new moon and so usually the Lantern Festival is about 15 days later.  It is hard to trace down the origin of this festival.  In modern times though, after work people gather to take part in different activities that vary regionally.  Some of these activities include lighting lanterns to let them go, setting off fireworks, guessing riddles written on lanterns, and possibly dragon dances or lion dances.  Here in Jining that night a friend and I went out to an area near a lake.  This is the main area for people to go in Jining and there were tons of people out there.  After getting out of the cab we walked for a long time but while walking we saw the lanterns floating in the distance.  Eventually we were still walking and the lanterns were above us and it was pretty surreal.  After making it to the main area we ended up buying a couple lanterns and did set them off there and also back on the roof of our apartment.  It was a fun night.

So in a nutshell that is some things that do happen during Spring Festival.  A couple times I did mention what happens in the north or the south and that is because China is a huge country with different traditions depending on the region.  Plus for the seven days off I was in the southern part of the country but I do actually live in the north, and so I was able to see some differences for the short time I was down south.  I had planned to post this account earlier but I did get caught up with planning and taking a couple more trips.  A couple weeks ago I went to both Nanjing and Suzhou while this last week I was up in Beijing.  The weather is really nice now and so it is a great time to travel and see some places.  I will write later.

Preparation for Spring Festival in Jining

Posters posted along the doors of shops

Selling fish out of the back of a truck on the Eve of Spring Festival

Notice the fish found down south alongside the lanterns

Another tradition of giving money to kids in red envelopes during Spring Festival

Hard to get a good picture of how many that are actually floating above

Guilin shan shui jia tian xia

You feel the bus making a sudden stop and try not to fall out of the seats.  These same seats that have been used as a bed throughout this longer bus ride than expected.  Looking out the window you notice it is early morning with the sun still yet unseen but daybreak has started giving light to the sky.  Then you notice one giant looking mountain off in the distance. . . then another one. . . one more.  Trying to count these behemoths would be exhausting especially with the lack of sleep.  Besides there is a fog that is floating around and it is hard to make out when and where these structures will pop up.  It’s almost as if there are multiple dragons walking around this new location I have found to explore.  About thirty minutes later I hear the bus driver saying the name of the city I am looking to get off at and start my vacation. 

I have ended up in Yangshou China.  An area that is known for wonderful nature and scenery.  As I am getting off of the bus I am excited but at the same time a little nervous walking around this mystical new land.  That morning after breakfast I travel another 27 kilometers to an even smaller village of XingPing.  Up at this village I see a famous scene that everyone in China knows about and that is because it is the picture on the back of the 20 RMB bill (picture is below).  Plus in XingPing I did take a bamboo raft trip down the Li River to get an even closer view of these “dragon backs” coming out of the ground.  It did rain during that day on multiple occasions which meant the fog and mystical feeling stayed around.

 

Another activity I did near Yangshou was renting a bicycle and going out looking for the “head of these dragons.”  In reality it was a good ride to see the various small villages intertwined with the unique scenery.  There were multiple fields with different crops, some orange orchards, and these mountains providing a neat background for some pictures.  I did ford the river one time to get along the smaller dirt paths but it would start to rain a couple hours later so it didn’t matter if my feet were dry by that time.

 

One activity that I saw from a distance but is real unique to this area is how the locals fish.  First let me explain that the river is actually clear and can see to the bottom which for China is a rare thing, but even with the clear water I think the fisherman are lazy.  They have trained birds to do the fishing for them!  These birds are called cormorant birds.  So how it works is the fisherman will be out on their bamboo raft accompanied with usually two birds who are his pets. In order for the birds to not eat all the fish it catches the fisherman ties a snare lightly around the bird’s throat. The fisherman coaxes and encourages the bird to go looking for fish and eventually they catch a fish.  Since the bird can’t swallow the bigger fish it swims back to the raft where the fisherman takes the fish from the bird and sends it out fishing again.  Eventually the bird does get rewarded and ultimately for the birds it is a game.  In fact while I was watching one bird found a branch and was playing with it teasing his friend who was on the raft watching him.  Eventually the bird did get back to ‘work’ and found a pretty big fish.  I was lucky enough to see the fishing pretty close without many people around after hiking sometime along the river.  

After spending a few days in Yangshou I did leave this area and headed up north a little ways to an area known as the Longsheng Rice Terraces.  Even though I did leave the “dragons” unseen this area up in the mountains still had a mystical feel.  This is mainly due to the fog that had always been hanging around which again did make it hard to see the landscape at a distance. 

Up in this area there are multiple villages that have various minorities living in them with some unique traditions.  One of these minority groups is named the Red Yao Long Haired Village.  This village is known for how long and dark colored their hair is no matter how old they are.  They only cut their hair one time in their life and after cutting it they don’t throw it away.  Instead they use that hair to tie it up.  A different hairstyle from the females represent the different marital status.  So depending on if you are single, married without kids, or married with kids means how you wear your hair.  While in this village I was able to see a performance where they talked about the different customs and cultures.  Plus as part of this performance I was ‘voluntold’ to participate in a wedding ceremony.  There were four of us on stage (2 Chinese and 2 foreigners) along with the woman of the village going through a wedding ceremony.  It was pretty interesting and the craziest thing that happened was us “newlyweds” danced around in a circle while the other woman were the perimeter of the circle.  As we were going around in a circle the perimeter would be pinching our butt.  This is very common and shows love in the village.  They didn’t say this but I think it is also checking to see if the guy works.  I say this because it is a lot of walking up and down in the terraces for working and so someone who does this daily would have a fine tuned gluteus maximus.   

So besides getting “married” I spent that day and the next day exploring the different villages and different rice terraces.  I ended up sleeping at a village real close to the top of this mountain and was supposed to be an amazing view of the terraces.  Even the next morning the fog was still around and was raining off and on so it was hard to see the vastness of the terraces.  I eventually had to head back to “civilization” and took about a three hour bus down to the town of Guilin, which is the name of a city but also the county where I have stayed these last few days (hence the title of this post: ‘Guilin’s mountain and water scenery is the best under heaven’).  Going along the road I still saw the backs of the dragons (really known as the Karst Mountains) off in the distance and could easily imagine a traveler coming across a few ginormous dragon heads wherever these mountains fade away. 

I took an overnight bus to a bigger city of Guangzhou and after about a fourteen hours was on my train back home.  About twenty seven hours later I ended up back in a city with no amazing view of nature right out my doorstep.  Again this trip was able to happen because of the Spring Festival holidays which I didn’t even talk about in this post.  That is because this post is long enough and more importantly the festival is still somewhat going on and there are more activities planned before the full moon marking the end of the festival.  Once some more of these activities happen I will write about it describing what happened and sharing a couple differences between the different locations I have been for the festival.  For now enjoy the pictures and if you look close enough you might see a dragon off in the distance.  I will write later.       

"Dragons" stalking the city of Yangshou 

cormorant bird bringing back a fish

they keep the black hair color
 by washing their hair with the water that was used
to rinse the rice before cooking

steps leading up to the village I stayed the night

if you didn't want to carry your bag up a local could do it easily

no rice in the terraces now but will be planted in the summer