Update: Furniture arrived!

I included a short video of the moving in of our furniture into the post 'Furniture arrived!' below. Check it out if you want.

The year of the pig

One more day and our first national holiday in China lies behind us. China has three so called 'golden weeks' during which the entire nation is enjoying some days off. As most Chinese don't have a lot of annual leave, these golden weeks are arranged in such a way that the free days will be compensated for by working a few times during weekends. Last week, we had the so called 'Spring festival', or the celebration of the (lunar) Chinese new year. It is the most important celebration of the year. Tradiationally, the Chinese celebrate the spring festival together with their families in their home towns. As I wrote before millions of people will be on the move during this time of year, and as almost everyone is free, parks and other public places of interest are packed. It is definitely not the best time to do site seeing.

I experienced this week both as an extremely quiet time as well as an extremely loud time. Extremely quiet because of the absense of otherwise always and everywhere present construction work noise and because of the unusually empty streets ... very comfortable. During the night, though, it was definitely not a quiet time, as on every night fireworks were lit. I had hoped that it would be over after new year's eve (17-18 February), but sadly this was not the case. Every single night, the sky was lit with rockets and cracking noise. Quite beautiful, but it irritated me anyway. I don't understand that these people don't get bored with it after a few days. Perhaps it was because of the fact that in Fuzhou for the first time again in a few years, fireworks were allowed again. How unlucky for us! Actually, I was irritated by it mostly out of fear that Mylène would wake up, which in the end, she didn't, not even on new year's eve!

Except for fireworks, the spring festival goes along with several other traditions as well, as I learnt during these days. The dinner on new year's eve, for example, is the most important dinner of the year. Two ingredients should traditionally be included in the dinner: fish and rice cake. The reason lies in the pronounciation of the Chinese words for fish and rice cake. The word for fish sounds similar to the word for 'surplus' (to have something left) and the word for rice cake sounds similar to the word for 'high'. So, the combination of fish and rice cake expresses the wish for a bigger surplus (read: get richer) in the coming year.
Another example is the tradition to give people mandarins. There seems to be more than one explanation for this habit (I heard two). One is that the word for mandarin sounds similar to the word for 'luck', so giving people mandarins is to wish people good luck. The custom is, to give two mandarins, or double luck. Quite interesting, isn't it?

We spent the spring festival in Fuzhou, together with Shiqi's parents, who came over from Shanghai. A convenient side effect for us, was the fact that the table was filled with delicious Chinese dishes every night without us having to do anything for it. As with all holidays, this one went by too quickly. On Monday, it's back to work again, the first working day in the year of the pig!

First visitor - first visit to Gu Shan

Last week, my sister Karin visited us in Fuzhou. She was our first visitor, so we were able to check whether the house is indeed as guest friendly as we thought it would be. I think it passed the test: Karin was very enthousiastic about the house. How lucky she was, that the furniture had just arrived a few days before her arrival.

We took the opportunity to go and check out one of the sites to see around Fuzhou and went to mount Gu Shan. For us, it was also the first time to visit one of the touristic sites of Fuzhou, since we arrived here.
The weather was excellent, with a comfortable temperature of around 18C and a blue sky. An splendid day for climbing the mountain .... which we did by car. Our excuse was that Mylène was with us so we couldn't possibly do it on foot.

On Gu Shan, we visited a beautiful monastry. The entrance fee was an outrageous 40 RMB per person (last year it was still 3 RMB), but as Fuzhou is not littered with sites to see, and since we were already there, we decided to go in anyway. Luckily, it was definitely worthwhile. The monastry is beautifully located on the slopes of the mountain, near the top, amidst lots of green. The complex is spacious, and houses a surprisingly nice temple (and I have seen quite a lot of them in Asia). The vegetarian restaurant supposedly serves excellent food, but that we left for another visit. Afterwards I browsed around online for a bit, but did not find all that much information about this monastry. The only information I found was that it is a Taoist monastry, famous for its many scrolls written in monks' blood. A rather creepy story for such a beautiful place.

As always, the weekend was far too short, and Karin had to leave us again far too quickly. Mylène also liked it and is looking forward to seeing her auntie again, soon, to visit some other attractions that Fuzhou has to offer.