Red Lantern: February 2018

Sunday, 25 February 2018

狗年快乐！

狗年快乐！
Gǒu nián kuàilè!
Happy year of the dog!

February 16 was New Year's Day in China and the first day of the year of the dog. The Chinese calendar follows the moon, that's why the first day of the year moves from year to year, but it's always sometime between the second half of January and the middle of February. The week around New Year's Day is a holiday for nearly everyone. It's the time of year people don't have to work and everything shuts down. If you are a westerner and don't know that, you might suffer from starvation, because you won't find any open restaurants or supermarkets to buy food or whatever you need. The entire country is on the move and it is difficult to find tickets to go places. So plan ahead if you want to travel and book your rooms and tickets well in advance. And if you are a foreigner, make sure the hotel you want to stay at, accepts you. Not all hotels have a licence to accommodate foreigners. So ask before you book, otherwise you'll end up staying at reception with your luggage and won't know what to do, because it will be nearly impossible to find a room or even a ticket home.
The Chinese call it Spring Festival and say that it is the beginning of the spring season. It's hard to believe that if you are somewhere in the north where everything is covered with snow and temperatures are subzero. But spring is usually not very far and at least in the south it gets warmer towards the end of the month.
The change of the year is very colourful and there are many celebrations in each province. In Hong Kong for example, many celebrations take place on the water. There's fireworks, tigers, dragons, music, dances, etc.
The dominant colour is red. There are red lanterns, blessings on red paper, banners or posters, the zodiac, be it Monkey (2016), Rooster (2017) or Dog (2018) is red too. People decorate their windows and doors and put a Fu (福) outside their door. Many people like to put it upside down.
A 福 (fu) character is a indispensable decoration item for every Chinese family’s New Year decoration. Fu (福) means good fortune, blessing, and happiness. You will see that many Chinese people put their 福 (fu) upside down, no matter whether on the doors or on the windows.
This interesting tradition came from a romantic mistake.
One Chinese New Year’s day (the exact year is not known now), a family attached their 福 (fu) upside down as a careless mistake. On the first day of Chinese New Year, their first guest came to visit, and saw the upside-down 福, and kindly shouted to them: "你们的福倒了!" ('Your fu is upside down!').
倒 (dao /daoww/) means 'upside down', but has the same pronunciation as 到 (dao /daoww/), which means 'to arrive'. So "你们的福倒了" could be understood as ‘Your fu (blessing) has arrived’ (你们的福到了).
People liked the alternative meaning so much that they started fixing their fu decoration upside down to "invoke" an arrival of blessings.
Source: https://www.chinahighlights.com/travelguide/special-report/chinese-new-year/paper-cutting.htm
There are more stories about the upside down Fu, which you can read here. and here.
People gather together and have a festive meal, which includes dumplings as you can see in the photos below. Sometime in the early hours of the new year, people play Mahjong. A very good friend is quite good at it and always wins a small fortune.
Of course many 红包 - Hong Bao - Red Packets change hands. As the name says, the packets/bags are red and the writing on them (blessing of any kind) is yellow or golden. People put money in them and give them each other not only at New Year's Day, but on various occasions during the year. The amount can be small or large. It depends on you and how close you are with the person you want to give it to. Make sure the amount contains at least once the number 8, let's say 80 Yuan. Since 8 is the lucky number, you better but at least 88 Yuan in the Hong Bao.
Not only the calendar is different in China, but also the zodiac system is different too. Like ours, there are twelve zodiacs, but each one lasts for an entire year.
If you were born in the year of the dog, it might be a hard year for you. But you can turn it into a good year by wearing something red. That's why you see many Chinese wearing red shoes for example.

You can read about the year of the dog here.

And you can read about the Chinese zodiac system here. or here. or here.

A little joke with Snoop Dogg

That's my Fu - 福 with my name in Chinese under it.

One of the various Hong Baos I've received

Learning how to make dumplings

Here is a small video (may not show or play on iPhones and iPads)

If you would like to read more by me, find the following two books on Amazon by typing my name Theodore Goumas into the Amazon search bar.

Saturday, 3 February 2018

Wanderlust

A dear friend of mine says about us that we are gypsies, homeless and our bum itches when we stay too long in one place, that's why we are always on the move. I couldn't agree more with him. It really seems like we are always around and about with a suitcase and a rucksack and in our pockets, a ticket to somewhere. The more you travel and move around, the more people like you, you meet.

I met at least two of those wonderful people when I moved to Guiyang in the southwest of China. One of them is Cindy, a Canadian lady who was the penultimate teacher to arrive at the school I was working at and Catherine who followed a week or so later. Cindy spent a few years in the Gulf region and since I lived and worked in Saudi for a while, we had this in common. For the others we were the 'desert people'.

I mentioned Catherine in my last post (you can read it here - opens in a new window). Catherine took the last desk with PC available in our small but cosy staff room and since we were facing each other, we had the opportunity to get to know each other better.

Catherine is French, got married at the age of 28, got divorced a few years later, has two boys (now adults, one in France the other in Thailand), has a desire for Wanderlust and is also a thoroughbred musician. She has been travelling and moving around the world for many years and is currently living in Canada. During her stay in Guiyang, she was the one with the most interesting life. She went out frequently, despite the long journey from Jinyang to downtown Guiyang and having to take a taxi. She also seized the opportunity to see as much of China as possible and travelled around the country at the weekends, sometimes alone, sometimes with her housemate Breanne. When she travelled alone, she looked out for musicians to perform with. She does that wherever she is as you can see from the photos below. Her favourite instrument is the keyboard, but she also plays the guitar. She bought a keyboard at some point and started jamming with many other people in many different places. Sometime at the end of May, she met two Chinese who performed in a club called Powerhouse in downtown Guiyang and they invited her to play with them that night. Then they asked her if she wanted to perform in a restaurant in Jinyang. She said yes and from then on they played every night outside the restaurant in front of people dining. She took one night off though, to come see me presenting my book about my life in Ar'ar in the Saudi desert (you can read about the presentation here).

This photo was taken on one on her last nights in Guiyang. I took my friend Yu Rou Shi, (the one with the hat), part of her name means Rain, with me and off we went on my electric scooter from Huaguoyuan to Jinyang. It was a cloudy evening and it seemed like it was going to rain. Unfortunately, somewhere between Guiyang and Jinyang, the first drops started to fall. I stopped and took out the double rain coat and got us covered. A few miles later, we got in the middle of a thunderstorm and arrived at the venue in the pouring rain. I drove to the entrance and when the staff saw us, they rushed to us with massive umbrellas to give us shelter. I parked the scooter under a parasol and we went inside. Catherine and the musicians were sitting at a table next to the entrance and told us that they had performed only a few songs that evening and then had to take all their equipment indoors, due to the rain. They wouldn't be performing that night, so we sat at the table until midnight.

My mobile buzzed at some point and I saw this photo of us. Since Catherine and I were the only foreigners in the restaurant, it was sort of normal that people stared, looked and took photos. Somewhere opposite us was a lady sitting at a table with her friends. When she saw us, she took this photo and sent it to my dear friend Yi, who helped me register at the gym in Jinyang (read the post here), asking her if she knew us, because the lady knew that Yi has a foreign friend. The lady who took the photo is the manager of said gym. So Yi's message read: I know where you are and what you're doing. Yi couldn't be there that night, but went to see and to meet Catherine a few nights later, at her last gig.

That night was the last time I saw Catherine and I hope to see her again somewhere, sometime soon.