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Chinese New Year: the first seven days

2016 CNY in Beijing

Happy Travel Tuesday! I’ve been in Beijing for a week already. I don’t think I’ve been this cold for a lonnnng time! I’ve borrowed a coat from my mom’s friend, a sweater from my mom, and wool pants from somewhere, and I’ve literally been wearing these same few pieces of clothes every single day (which you’ll see in the pictures below). But nevermind the weather, I’m loving being back at my birth city with my favorite people. :)

And Chinese New Year proved to be a wonderful time to be back! Because everyone gets the week off of work for the holiday, we were able to spend a lot of time with family and friends. I wanted to do a photo-a-day kind of thing (a la Kerri), but I had such a hard time picking out just one photo to represent each day! So I decided to do a little mosaic thing for each day (can click on each picture to enlarge), to give you a look of how my family spent the first seven days of the Chinese New Years!

Day 1 – Arrival & CNY festival

Day 1

I landed in the Beijing airport in the wee hours of the first day of Chinese New Year. My cousin picked me up and we headed to my aunt + uncle’s house in the suburbs, where everyone was staying at for a few days.

In the morning, I woke up to the greetings of my mom, grandma, aunt, and uncle. Then I tagged along with my cousin and his girlfriend to a Chinese New Year festival in the heart of Beijing city (at the Temple of Earth park). The festival was supposed to have a lot of performances, street food, and handicraft stalls… but all we saw were people, people, and more people! I thought Beijing was supposed to be emptied out during this CNY week, but it was as if the entire leftover Beijing population decided to congregate here. After fighting the crowd for an hour or so, we gave up and went to watch a movie and eat hotpot at Haidilao.

Day 2 – fun with portraits

In the morning, we first visited my grandpa‘s burial site to take care of some business before the burial date (which is today, actually). It’s a beautiful place next to the mountains. Right next to it is an attraction site (Man Shan) that we had visited a long time ago when I was a kid. So we decided to stop by on the way back.

The centerpiece of this site is the large Buddha. I remember climbing on it as a kid and have a picture somewhere of me sitting on his hand, but now it’s all fenced off and no longer climbable. Right in front of it are stone statues of the 12 animals of the Chinese Zodiac, so we all found our own signs for a photo. We all about died laughing when my mom imitated a rooster crowing, complete with stance and arm movements. And at the end, we took a picture with the dragon (my grandpa’s sign) for a complete family portrait.

Day 3 – CNY festival and family dinner

This day saw the reunion of our two families (mine and my aunt’s) as we all headed to a Chinese New Year festival at the base of a mountain in the suburbs of Beijing. About half of the group (the more active half) climbed the mountain, while the other half (the grandmas and the lazy ones… ahem) stayed behind and chatted and entertained ourselves with tai-chi and yoga. Then we all had a wonderful lunch of dumplings and corn pancakes and browsed the stalls selling traditional Chinese handicrafts. As this is Year of the Monkey, the festival was monkey-themed, and we even saw a live little monkey posing for photo ops!

Then later that night, we all went out for a huge traditional Chinese New Years feast (drool-inducing post here).

Days 4-5 – back in my childhood home 

Since we have all been staying at my aunt + uncle’s house so far, on the 4th day, my grandma, mom, and I moved back to my grandpa and grandma’s house. This is where I lived until I was 6 years old when I moved to America, and since then have moved around to a lot of different apartments, and I love that my childhood home has always been a constant in my life.

These couple of days were spent just relaxing at home and helping my grandma clean up a little. We spent a lot of time looking at old photos and laughing at the poor fashion choices of the 80’s (my mom had a god awful perm) and telling stories about my grandpa.

We also went through the cupboards and found a lot of my grandma’s artwork. The last photo in the mosaic is a large painting that my grandma made for my grandpa’s 80th birthday. It features 8 cranes to symbolize 8 decades of life and 100 different 壽 (meaning “longevity/life”) to wish him a long happy life. For burial day, we are burning this painting to send it to him in his afterlife, so he can continue to hang it up in his new home. :)

Day 6 – lunch with my aunties

I always go out for a meal with my aunties – my mom’s very best friends – whenever I’m in Beijing! My mom has known most of them since her teenage years, and now four decades later, they’re still best friends.

This is one of the old pictures we dug up! This is the five of them 30+ years ago when they were in their mid-twenties!

my mom and her friends old pic

Reunions such as this are hard to come by now since my mom lives in the States and one of the other aunties lives in Japan. But for the first time in years, everyone is back in Beijing at the same time and the group is complete! My mom was the first one out of her group of friends to have babies (and ended up being the only one to have girls!), and so I was a novelty. My aunties loved taking baby me out to play and eat. I guess we still do the same today. :)

I can’t help but wonder if I will have friends like these someday.

Day 7 – best dumplings in the city

This was a very very cold day.  My mom and I met up with another one of her best friends, my auntie Qizheng, for a lunch of dumplings. Every time my mom comes back to Beijing, it has become their tradition to meet up at Xian Lao Man (馅老满), the best dumplings in the city.

This restaurant has a few locations, but only the Andingmen location (Metro Station: Andingmen) is good for dumplings.  The reason why the dumplings are the best here? Apart from a mind-boggling number of filling options and the good clean flavors, they are known for having really big fillings in each dumpling. It’s really hard for a normal person to make them that big, and trust me, it makes a difference in the enjoyment factor!

:::

So that was our past week. On the 8th day (earlier tonight as I’m writing this), the two families went out again for a dinner, this time to Beijing’s oldest roast duck restaurant (which deserves it’s own dedicated post!). As this post is being published, we are burying my grandfather’s ashes.

Maybe we have been having way too much fun in the wake of his passing. Maybe we should be mourning more instead of being out at festivals and feasts. But you know what? This is also a celebration of life and of the family that’s left. We shared stories and laughed and grew closer as a family and I know he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

I don’t think I’ve ever done this “diary” style of post before. I actually found it kinda hard to be terse (this post ended up being pretty long). What do you think of it? Is it interesting to see what someone does everyday? Also, this one and the last post I wrote probably hold the record for fastest turn-around time ever! Should I try to blog in real-time more, even if it means less detail? Let me know what you think! 

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Comments

  1. Anna, I adored this post!! I loved the style you wrote it in, the memories of your grandfather and the colours of Beijing! :) It really does look like a wonderful week, and I agree with you about having a celebration of life. I felt the same about my grandmother and I know that she would have wanted it that way too.
    As for blogging, for myself I enjoy mixing between real-time and the past, as I like to leave some posts for later, and write others straight away. I say go for whatever feels right for you, as I love reading either way. (And you look so cute in that mustard coloured coat!)

    • This really was such wonderful week and I think it’s so nice that our family spent so much quality time together, so I wanted to make sure I got it down as soon as possible or else I may never get to it like so many other things! And thanks so much for the feedback, Marcella! :) I really want to blog in real-time more because I do enjoy keeping up with a blogger, but I’m so slow with the photo editing and writing! I’ll try to do posts like this more often now!

  2. I love the intricate details of your photos, and how amazing your multi-generational family is! So neat that you got to spend CNY in China– and even in the wake of your grandfather’s passing, maybe this is how he would have wanted you to spend it. :)
    The longer I blog, the more I realize that blog audiences enjoy variety! Just because a post is less share-able doesn’t mean it lacks value or shouldn’t be written. I really enjoyed this!

    • I love that thought, Daisy… and I’m sure he is watching from above and is happy that I’m with my family for CNY :) I’ve never been to Beijing ever during CNY and it’s so nice to experience that and spend so much time with family. And thanks for the feedback! I really do enjoy writing posts like this (the ones that are more meaningful to me personally), but I’m never sure if it’s interesting for someone else.

  3. Yes, the struggle to write more with less words is real. Some of those 100 words posts that I do, they’re not as easy as they seem. But it is good practice, it forces you to think and be creative when structuring your statements to make them short and still be sort of grammatically correct. Your writing skills will improve without you realizing it.

    Also, when you write in real time, your memory is still fresh and you’ll be able to write more accurately and with more feeling. And the added benefit would be when you re-read what you wrote some time in the future, it will put more smiles in your mouth.

    So yeah, I will encourage you to write more real time “diary” posts. Less research, less words, but more creativity and more fun. :)

    • Thanks CL! I really do want to blog in real time more because I enjoy reading others blogs like that (like you do a good job, which I still don’t know how you manage to!), but I find it so hard for some reason to edit pictures on time. Or sometimes I will have a bunch of good pictures but not sure what to write about them, and I don’t really want to just do a photo dump post. But then if I wait too long, then there’s a 70% chance I will never write anything about it anymore. And there’s also the problem that most of what I do is eat, and I don’t want all these food posts in a row. Ahhh the silly dilemmas of blogging lol.

    • Isn’t looking at old pictures fun? We are having a great time, and I know this is how my grandfather would have wanted it. :) I’m glad you like this kind of post… I will definitely do more like this since the feedback is all positive so far!

  6. What a celebration! I’ve never been in China for their new year, but I was in Cambodia for the Khmer New Year and was so impressed by what a celebration it was.

    • Oh I bet there was a ton going on in Cambodia for the new year as well! Most of Beijing is actually super quiet + dead for CNY because everyone is gone off to their families and most places get shut down… but I was surprised at how lively the festivals were!

  7. Right.. What better place to be in during CNY than Beijing. I can’t believe they had live baby monkeys for photo ops! All we have here in Singapore is Sun Wu Kong (Monkey God). And I don’t even like him. #TravelTuesday

    • Haha I’m not sure how ethical it is to have live monkeys posing with people.. but let’s not think about that :P.Beijing is pretty dead during CNY actually because everything is shut down, but it’s nice to have family to tell you where to go! I was actually in Singapore last year for CNY!! I remember we didn’t do anything because it was all dead…. but then we went to the Chingay parade and that was so much fun!

  8. A celebration of life indeed! While festival itself sounds really intriguing, the best part sounds like all of the quality family time you’ve been getting in. (And the food, obviously!) How cool that you get to return to your childhood home as well. Also, your grandma is a phenomenal artist! That painting is incredible!

    • The best part is definitely spending all this time with family, and seeing people I haven’t seen in yeeeears :). Seriously… isn’t my grandma such a good artist? She didn’t even start learning until she was 60!

  9. How cool that you got to be in China for the New Year, and I love your pictures, my absolute favorite is the second one in this post:). Unfortunately I have always missed the Chinese New Years while traveling to China, so it’s great to read about it in your post! Happy Year of the Monkey!

    • Hehe Happy monkey year to you too! :) CNY in Beijing is honestly probably not all that exciting because most everything is closed, but having family made all the difference!

  10. I love knowing what you’ve been doing in real-time! Maybe disperse some of these in between your more thorough posts? Haha I love finding old photos! And I can’t believe your grandma painted that! Sounds like you had a pretty amazing new years :) THOSE DUMPLINGS LOOK DELICIOUS.Sorry I’m so scatterbrained. It’s 4 PM and it’s been a long day at work.

    • HAHA no worries! I will try to do more posts like this! It’s just so hard for me because I’m procrastinate so much with the photo editing, and sometimes though I have photos, I just don’t know what to write. Yeah the dumplings are so good! I could seriously eat dumplings every single day… which I’m pretty sure I have so far and am gaining so much weight!

  11. Lovely pictures, flowers (!) and happy faces. You had surely a great time.

  12. Anna, I like the style of this post. I like the honesty and how you express affection for your family. It is refreshing to read things that are not necessarily part of a blogger “niche.” Hope you continue having a good time with your family.

    • Thanks so much for the feedback Ruth! I do like posts like this, but worry that it may be uninteresting for readers.. so I really appreciate your thoughts! It looks like I”m gonna be in Beijing for a while, and it is nice spending time with family. :)

  14. Ooh, thanks for that little shout out there!!

    I love posts like this, I like that they give little insights into people’s lives and I always find them so much easier to comment on. I’m all about the stories and every day things. Probably because I have very few people to share this kind of thing with so I like to share in the comments :)

    It all sounds like one great big family party (with far too many people!). I’m sure your Granddad approves of all the fun you are having and all the reminiscing. I think the dragon family portrait is such a nice way to celebrate his life. I kind of wish we had something like this in British (Western World) culture. But I guess we’ve got our zodiacs…

    I hope you enjoy all the family time and if you could just ship me some of those dumplings (veggies ones only please ;) ) that would be great!

    • Thanks so much for your thoughts, Kerri :). I always look forward to what you have to say! I will definitely try to do more posts like this… if I can get my butt in gear and edit photos quickly enough, lol. And I guess I just need to get over the fact that I may not have a lot of interesting things to say for every event.

      We have been having a ton of fun with family, and I’m sure my grandfather is happy knowing that. :) And yeah… the Chinese take the 12 animal zodiac thing seriously! hehe

  15. Definitely fascinating to follow your week – it sounds like a busy one! Those dumplings are making me super hungry. Hope all went well with your grandpa’s burial day and you enjoy the family time.

    • Thanks Jessi! It was a busy week because of CNY and everyone gets the whole week off of work (lucky, right?) so there’s a ton of time to spend with family & friends. And yep, everything went well. :)

  16. I’m so sorry to hear about the passing of your grandfather – but it’s cool to see the positive side of it to. I’m sure there is and will be mourning over his death, but what a beautiful thing to see how it has brought about a family reunion, and how you can all lean on each other through the healing and mourning process. I love the balance you’ve found in celebrating life in the midst of everything. Enjoy the family time!

    • Thanks Sara! Even though we are sad over his passing, we all understand the positive side of it as he’s been sick for a while now and is in a much better place now :). I’m really glad to be able to be here in Beijing with my family and be with my grandmother during this time!

  17. I keep forgetting about these travel Tuesday linkups! (Need to get back to my blogging game) your week looks like it was well spent celebrating life and family and food! The things that are important :) that painting your grandma painted with the cranes is beautiful! How special.

    • Don’t forgot to link up this Tuesday Mere, which is today! :) It was a wonderful week with family and friends, and omg… I ate sooooo much food! My grandma is such a talented artist … hard to believe that she only started learning drawing after she retired at 60!