Chinese New Year in a blur of baijiu.

So, I arrived back in Kunming on Monday evening to clear skies and much warmer temperatures. I had spent Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival, with my Chinese friends in Pingxiang, Jiangxi Province. I had a great time, though it's a very different experience being in Pingixang than being here in Kunming, and it was nice to get back to my own place.

Having found it difficult
to buy a train ticket, I decided to fly from Kunming to Changsha. I then took a bus directly from the airport to Pingxiang. As usual, I managed to make a friend on the bus - a guy from Pingxiang who's now working in Shanghai (I think!) and who was happy to chat and practise his English. In fact, I spent the whole holiday chatting to people who wanted to practise their English. It's nice to be in a place where you're kind of special and where people are always friendly and welcoming. Though of course the flipside of this is that I have to put up with lots of staring and comments of 'laowai' ['foreigner']. I am much more used to this now than I was when I first arrived in Pingxiang in 2005 and sometimes I even make jokes with people about it. The interest is always based on surprise and curiosity and not hostility, so smiling and saying 'hello' seem to be an appropriate response.

During my holiday I spent some days with Steven (my Chinese friend)'s parents, also making a trip to his grandparents' house in the countryside. I also spent a couple of days with a former student of Rick's - her home is in the deepest countryside and has no running water or gas. Washing is done with a bucket and food is cooked over a fire fuelled with coal bricks. Water comes from a well and is routinely boiled. When we walked about the countryside, whole villages of people were staring at me.

Another highlight was going to Huang Shi Mu (sp?) with Joseph, one of Rick's friends, and some of his friends from the photography club. We had quite a steep climb up the mountain and stayed in a guesthouse near the top - again no running water and this time also no electricity except for a short time from a generator. Good job I took a torch and it was a clear night - the stars were amazing and the moon very bright. The toilets there were across a stream, accessed across a rickety bridge! Kind of puts you off getting up in the middle of the night...

New Year itself was very noisy - many many fireworks and firecrackers going off for days and days. It was incredible - I've never heard anything like it before.

So, the Russians drink vodka, the Chinese drink baijiu. I think it's to do with the cold - houses are largely unheated and so as well as wearing all your clothes a shot of the strong stuff helps keep you warm! We drank a fair bit during the festive period. Some was bought from a shop, but quite a lot was home made from... erm... I'm really not quite sure! At one place it arrived at the table in a soft drink bottle, obviously decanted out from some vat somewhere.

Food... more meat than normal on the table, including the special treat of dog (which I mostly avoided this time - put off by having a live one running round my feet while we were eating, though I did eat some donkey meat). Lots of snacks - fruit, nuts, some sweets. Lots of visitors and trips to other people's houses to eat and drink.

It was cool because this time Steven and Rose's daughter got a lot more used to me and was quite friendly. She's very cute and now learning to speak.

I also started learning how to play Majiang, though I am a bit slow at it still.

Well, that's a very brief version of my trip. Here are some photos.

Teaching starts again next week so I'm looking forward to finding out which classes I'll be teaching...