Zhu Ni Kuai Le Xin Nian

Happy Year of the Tiger, everyone!

As you no doubt know, last night was Chinese New Year’s Eve, the start of the New Year holiday (also called the Spring Festival). Our first one here in Shanghai, and quite exciting it is! The past week or so has seen the city ‘getting ready’ with decorations – well, actually they started  before Christmas, and in many cases just never took those decorations down, it being rather handy that red and gold is a theme that serves both holidays quite well… But anyway, more and more decorations have been going up. In all of the doorways of all of the buildings there are lanterns, and usually little mandarin bushes as well with little red envelopes (“hongbao”) tied to the branches. In the shops in the mall, a lot of the mannequins all have tiger heads , which is kind of funny. I’ll try to get photos of all of this stuff as well as fun goings-on about town over the next week, but today is quite rainy and cold and dismal, and I’ve got a bit of a hangover, so it’s going to have to wait.

Erm, about that hangover… we celebrated the New Year over at G’s colleague D’s place with him, his lovely wife N, and several other couples. They live across town, so we spent the night, as they kindly offered the use of their guest room, and we had some concerns as to how we would get home with a sleeping 3 year old. (Who, as it turned out, did not actually fall asleep until nearly 1 am – she is a party girl.) D & N’s apartment is on the 30th floor, so we had an amazing view! The fireworks were incredible. They were EVERYWHERE, going off all evening long until… well, I don’t know that they’ve stopped yet, actually. The biggest and most fantastic time of all though was around midnight, starting about about a quarter to and then going on and on and on after.

Here’s a bit of video I took of the ones that were being set off just across the street:  Oooh pretty

But to really appreciate the scope, have a look at this clip where I scanned around the skyline: holy moley

It was unbelievable, the sound, the smell, just beyond words really. The air got thicker and thicker with gunpowder smoke, by the time we went to bed you couldn’t even see down to the street level.

Anyway, as I said I’ll try to get some cool pics of CNY stuff from around town over the next few days – but today it’s just a good day to stay in with a big mug of tea!