Chinese New Year - Fireworks, Gambling, and Family Fun

February 2015. Some of my fondest memories were made traveling that month. I had a rare opportunity to spend China's biggest and most important holiday with a friend and his family. Even better, two of my closest friends were also along for the ride.

The Beginning

It was my first year in China. I lived in Shandong province in a place called Jinan (about an hour from Beijing). Everything was still new, fresh, and exciting. At the time, I worked with a couple from "England". The reason England is in quotations is because one of them is actually from Denmark. Our school at the time made her pretend to be British even though she spoke flawlessly. For the sake of this story, I'll call them William and Freja.

The three of us had befriended a guy from the marketing department at our school. His name is Box and he was incredibly friendly towards us. He would always have time to chat and even invited us to his home for hot pot one evening:

His apartment was so small we literally sat on his bed to eat dinner.

Also, for those of you who don't know what hot pot is...

You start with a pot of boiling broth (usually tomato or with spicy peppers) then you add various vegetables and bits of meat/seafood. There can be one communal pot or one for each individual:

The square blocks at the bottom are pieces of congealed duck blood. Not my favorite. To the right of that is shrimp paste, which you make into balls and cook. Much recommended.

Spring Festival

Chinese New Year is commonly called "Spring Festival" in China. This is the one time of year where nearly the whole country gets a full week off work. Many people leave their families to work in cities. This one time of year they are free to return home makes their hard work worth it. Coming from a western country, I liken this holiday to Christmas. Both emphasize family and they bring together everyone for a feast.

Whereas Christmas is on December 25th every year, Spring Festival's date change according to the lunar calendar. About a month beforehand, Box suggested we come with him to Guiyang, Guizhou to spend the holidays with his family. After discussing it, we decided we would go there for a week and then spend our next week off traveling separately (we were fortunate and were given two weeks off as opposed to one).

Needless to say, traveling during Spring Festival is a nightmare. Imagine over a billion people mobilizing at the same time. It's quite a sight to see. Luckily, we fought the crowds at the airport and flew south. Right away, we were struck with how hospitable they were towards us. I honestly anticipated sleeping on a couch or maybe a spare room with bunk beds...but they gave us A WHOLE APARTMENT to ourselves.

Box's uncle and aunt crammed in to another apartment for the week we were there and gave up their own apartment for us. Talk about hospitality!!

This wasn't a small, run-down apartment either. Two bedrooms fit with satellite TV and heated blankets.

Guiyang at night

His family opened us with open arms and we quickly met his "brothers" and "sisters" (cousins are referred to as brothers and sisters in China showing their strong familial bond). We spent most of the time traveling around Guiyang with them:

Here we are with his sister Jessica and his little brother Peter. Missing from the photo is his older brother Bing.

They took us to a gorgeous park the first day and we went biking together. The next day, they took us to an ancient town called Qingyan. This is the China I was looking for. It was built in the Ming Dynasty, making it oh about 600 years old (638 to be exact). Complete with city walls and city gates, we entered the city on a beautiful sunny morning:

Qingyan Ancient Village

Dried pig's snout anyone? Apparently pig's feet is a popular food here as they symbolize good luck

After climbing the city walls we were rewarded with a breathtaking view

New Years Eve

The day was here. It's a tradition to launch fireworks at midnight so we ventured into town and found a shop to fit our needs. I'm from Canada so fireworks aren't so readily available. I ended up spending about 200 元, which equates to roughly $40 Canadian.

What could go wrong?

Afterwards, we headed to the restaurant where the main event was to be held. The family had rented a private room. It included a private bathroom, a massive round table (that could sit about 20), two mahjong tables, and a couch and tv. We had a delicious dinner and we watched as toasts were exchanged back and forth. They gave us some Chinese wine called baijiu (pronounced bye joe...sorta) which is about 56 % alcohol and we took part in a few toasts ourselves. The stuff is wickedly powerful and made from fermented sorghum.

The food automatically spun on the lazy Susan and you had to pluck food from the plates as they went by

This particular bottle is worth about 2000元 apparently (about $400 Canadian). It ranges from $1 bottles to more expensive and high quality bottles like this one. I'm not a big fan of baijiu but this bottle tasted quite nice.

After dinner was finished, we played a game and received lucky money from Box's grandmother. Then the gambling began. Well, it began again. They had been gambling all day. They gave us a basic run down on how to play Mahjong and we joined in. I don't know the advanced way to play the game but it's kind of similar to tile rummy.

This table is electronic and can collect and stack the tiles automatically

Midnight Shenanigans

Midnight was fast approaching. After drinking all night, we moved from gambling to gun-powder. The party disbanded their separate ways as it was mostly the younger crowd who were going to launch off fireworks. We drove to a nearby bridge and staked an area of our own. Freya wasn't too fond of William and I launching off fireworks while drunk (with good reason) so she spectated from afar. William and I decided a bottle of red wine was in order:

Midnight struck and the whole city erupted with light. I've never seen so many fireworks in my life. It lasted for at least an hour and the air smelled of smoke until the day after. We didn't have too many large fireworks in our own group but we didn't need any.

We were told this had a launch height of 50m. Lost in translation?

A blurry photo of William booking it. Some of these fireworks were more like mini bombs so they got the adrenaline pumping

For those of you who have experienced Spring Festival in China, what's your favorite memory?