Ingredients for making dumplings: $5.
It's a Chinese tradition to make dumplings together on Chinese New Year. And when I say make them, I mean make them from scratch start-with-flour-and-water-and-vegetables kind of dumplings. It's not really as hard as it sounds and they are delicious. And they make you feel really warm on a freezing New Year's eve.
Fireworks: $15. (If I had it my way but my husband always buys about 10 times that amount.)
Fireworks in China are like nothing I've ever experienced before. The fireworks start going off a couple of days before New Year's Eve and they reach a crescendo right at midnight. The sound is deafening. The windows rattle. The floor shakes. Some people stand on the street next to my building and shoot off fireworks which then rise up and explode in fiery flowers right outside our window on the 26th floor. It's a jaw-dropping spectacle even for the adults, so you can imagine the kids are jumping out of their skin.
Not shuttling from one set of grandparents to the next on the holiday: Priceless.
This holiday, like Christmas, reminds me once again how lucky I am to be in a cross-cultural marriage. At Christmas I watch my poor sister shuttle from her husband's parents' house, back to my folks' house, then back to his. Always trying to keep everyone happy and sometimes failing to do the same for herself. Meanwhile at Christmas time my family can have us all to themselves from the winter solstic straight through to Epiphany if they can stand us that long. And at Chinese New Year my family never misses us, and my husband's parents get to play and laugh and jump with my kids to their hearts' content all throughout the holiday. I feel blessed to be married to the best guy in the world and have stress-free holidays with his family and mine.
Happy Year of the Mouse to you and yours!
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Wishing you and your family a Happy & Prosperous Chinese New Year!
Posted by Madhan Kumar on February 05, 2008 at 02:00 PM CST #
A very happy new year to you and yours.
While in India recently, I read a newspaper article about Indian overseas families having the opposite problem: they often can't get time off during the big Hindu festival (Diwali), but when they do have time off (Christmas), their relatives in India are working. The worst of both worlds, unfortunately.
Posted by Deirdré Straughan on February 07, 2008 at 03:54 AM CST #
Chinese New Year has always been like Christmas for us, growing up. It's great that you get to share in it now too!
Posted by Pam on February 14, 2008 at 12:15 PM CST #
Thanks Madhan! Same to you and yours!
Deirdre, that is an unfortunate scenario. I wonder if one day we won't have national holidays at all, and instead let employees choose when to take time off. On the one hand it is nice to go away at Thanksgiving or Christmas and know there's nothing going on at the office since it's shut down, but on the other hand wouldn't it be good for the company if someone was staffing the office all year long and people took time off when they wanted to? Kind of like Katie Couric and Matt Lauer used to do on the Today Show?
Pam I do feel blessed to get to see this holiday from the inside! It's something you have to experience to really understand.
Posted by 192.18.43.225 on February 14, 2008 at 02:13 PM CST #