Pre Chinese New Year

This is a great photo, able to show many things at once. First and foremost, cute Storey! On the left of the photo, two items of interest. The first is the fish hanging down to dry with the laundry! This is the time to be drying meats, fish, etc., for the New Year, which begins January 26. This is normally the coldest month, therefore the most "auspicious" time to dry foods for the new year. Pieces of meat and fish are hanging out all around Shanghai. Everyone stocks up on food for the New Year. The stores are brimming with food and people.

Also on the left you can see the new store fronts with marble columns and marble slab lintels containing the store names. These were all just added to our beautified street. Storey is standing on the new pavered sidewalk that went in this past fall, and the road was repaved, also. On that repaved road you can see a wedding limo, all decked out with flowers. Hard to see, but there is a procession of other beflowered cars following.The Pearson's roaming the streets of Shanghai! We are headed to the Nanjing market for shirts, shoes, socks, DS games, Pokeman cards, jeans and DVD's. Great one stop shopping.
I attended a talk hosted by the American Women's Club of Shanghai yesterday that was all about Chinese New Year. This week is particularly busy as many people prepare to leave and go home for the celebration. New Year's Eve dinner together is the big event. That will be next Sunday night, January 25. Non-stop fireworks and firecrackers. The New Year's celebration lasts 15 days. Each day is significant for something. After staying up late to see the countdown and fireworks on New Year's Eve, it is important to greet the New Year, so everyone rises very early in the morning. It is a day to spend just with immediate family. The second day is for visiting and taking gifts to others. The third day, for some reason, is a day full of bickering, so to avoid that everyone stays home! The 4th day is the day of travel, and this is when the more affluent families head out of town or country. Day 5 is the business people's day to pray to the business gods. Great fireworks are on the eve of the 5th to attract the business god's attention, and then the 5th day is filled with prays in the temples and fireworks, crackers. The 7th day is the celebration of everyone's birthday for that year. This is the year of the ox. The zodiac rotation is every 12 years. We were warned that if someone asks you what zodiac sign you were born in, they are really figuring out how old you are! The last day, the 15th day, is the Lantern Festival. You must wear bright clothes - no black or white which denote death. If it happens to be your zodiac year, you should wear everything red - underwear, socks, clothes. The year of the Ox is Paige's year, but so far she is not going along with the idea of all red!

It is also called Spring Festival as this was originally an agrarian festival (weren't they all?) celebrating the coming of spring and good harvests. It is a very important family time and they gather and make jiao zi (dumplings) together. As everything has double meaning here, they eat jiao zi because they look like gold ingots which means prosperity for the new year. The Chinese use the lunar calendar which is 360 days long, 30 days in each month, therefore the New Year changes every year. It will be mid-February next year.

Shanghai is filled with migrant workers, and as there are only so many trains available they will not all be able to make it home. Train tickets can only be purchased so many days in advance and the papers have already mentioned that most all the trains are full. Construction workers live on the job site (as seen in past photos) sleeping on tables or cots, and the laoban, boss, buys their food. They get paid once a year, right now, before the New Year. That is why they go home. To take the money to their family so they can live for the next year. They make about 500 RMB a month - $73.50. Everyone keeps warning of pickpockets this time of year as workers prepare to go home with as much as they can. There is a police officer on each train car, and they come around and chop each train ticket with their name and cell phone number in case they have something stolen and they can contact him immediately. Many of these train rides can last for over 2 days. There are more street hawkers, trying to make last minute money and jammed streets. Impossible to get taxi's. It took us about an hour to get home from picking the girls up at school last night. Next week it will be eerily quiet as everyone will be gone (including us!). We head to Hong Kong on Saturday to experience a little warmth and the New Year there. It should be A LOT quieter from what I have heard. We won't be missing out on it altogether, though, since it lasts 15 days!
More later.