ChinaTeacher

China’s Lantern Festival falls on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month which means Thursday, February 21, 2008 marked this year’s celebration of China’s Lantern Festival. 

This day’s important activity is watching lanterns (of course!).  Lanterns of various shapes and sizes are hung in the streets, attracting countless visitors. Children will hold self-made or bought lanterns to stroll with on the streets.  Performances such as a dragon lantern dance, a lion dance, a land boat dance, a yangge dance, walking on stilts and beating drums while dancing will also be part of the festivities.  And the festivities will conclude with magnificent fireworks to round off the evening.

China has special foods for every holiday.  For this event, people will eat yuanxiao, or rice dumplings, on this day, so it is also called the “Yuanxiao Festival.”  Yuanxiao also has another name, tangyuan.  These are small dumplings made of glutinous rice flour with rose petals, sesame, bean paste, jujube paste, walnut meat, dried fruit, sugar and edible oil as filling.  It’s really quite sweet and unfortunately not to my liking.  

Lucky for me, however, one of Hangzhou’s festival sites was set very close to my university campus!  Hangzhou recently completed a clean-up of one of the old neighbourhoods positioned alongside a cleaned-up branch of the Hangzhou-Beijing Grand Canal in the north part of the city.  What better time to introduce Xiaohe Street’s new facelift, than during this year’s Lantern Festival!

Xiaohe Street ancient 2-storey buildings have been completely refurbished and now accomodate small shops and eateries (very similar to Hefang Jie). The canal itself is no longer quite so dirty, with stagnant, putrid water and garbage everywhere.  I won’t say that it’s clean (this IS China, after all), but it has definitely improved.  (Check out the link to my PHOTOS).

Today, vendors were selling wine, cotton, preserved foods and an unlimited variety of jade jewellery.  I even saw some folk artists doing intricate Chinese paper cut-outs, knitting, calligraphy and singing Chinese opera!  In fact, I was asked to join the accompanying musicians so the local newspaper photographer could take our photo!  

You guessed right, there aren’t many foreigners in this part of Hangzhou.  As I wandered through the alleyways, people stopped to stare, or hesitantly approached and said “Ni Hao” or “Hello”.  I try my best to encourage local people to talk with me, but my success is usually limited to young children and old men – go figure! 

At the end of the day, I found Xiaohe Street very charming and a welcome addition to my community.  As I write this entry, fireworks are exploding all over China – a bomb could go off right now, and no one would ever know!  Happy Lantern Festival everyone!  This festival also signals the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations.  That’s bad news for me because it means we’re back to classes on Monday!  

Last week, during China’s New Year Festival, I headed down to the  Qinghefang Neighbourhood of Hangzhou.  It’s a very touristy place, but still one of my favourite spots in Hangzhou.  As you can see from the pictures (look for the photo link to the right of your screen), everyone else decided it would be a good idea to head down to Hefang Jie for the afternoon as well!

Hefang Jie is lined with small stalls, shops, pharmacies, restaurants and teahouses, and food stalls housed in traditional-style buildings. Walking along this street, you can easily imagine what it was like in centuries past.  You can bargain for good deals on paintings, tea, jade, silk products, animal horn combs and embroideries, etc.

If you want a good meal, there are some fine restaurants and teahouses in this area. There are also many snack food vendors along the street – duck head, anyone? Seriously, the food choices are enormous!  You can have traditionally-prepared tea in a teahouse here and visit old stores, even an herb museum and a traditional Chinese medicine shop.  It all comes at a price though, so bargain hard, and do so with a smile!

I have just returned to Hangzhou after spending a couple of weeks in Vancouver.  I had a wonderful time visiting with old friends and gorging on favourite foods but found myself longing to return to China after a week or so.  ... [Continue reading this entry]