It's All Over Now, Baby Red

Hongbao, the little red envelope with the  "lucky" money.

Yesterday I received my little red envelope, hongbao, from my school and it finally signalled the end of the Chinese New Year. Yes, it is nice to get a little present to welcome you back to school, at the start of the new semester. 100RMB is not much, but it is a little Chinese New Year tradition to give these red envelopes and one I rather like. 
Apologies for the Dylan-themed title. (My dear Irisha hates Bob D's music, but I always listen to it while marking my class's Maths homework.)


The CNY all started back in early February, with the Miaohui that we had at the end of the semester. No, Miaohui is not a cat being sick: it is a wonderful celebration of Chinese culture and traditions. Lots of traditional music, food, dancing, costumes and, of course, red. Just about everything should be red, as red is a lucky colour in China, well-known for its ghost-busting properties, as readers of my blog will already know. In fact, a red dog appeared in the school's foyer, to mark the Year of the Dog. (Unfortunately there is no hippopotamus in the Chinese zodiac.)

As for the main festivities of the Chinese New Year, we were in the Philippines for most of the CNY and so we missed the crowds at the train stations, the throngs at the airports and the inevitable traffic jams. As the CNY is the only real holiday that many Chinese people get during the year, just about everyone in the Middle Kingdom decides to go to some other part of the country and therefore the annual travel chaos is awful. China’s CNY travelageddon partly explains why so many of the younger generation want to go overseas during the holiday.

Shenzhen is a bit of an exception to the rule, when it comes to the New Year. This is because Shenzhen is such a new city – most of it was only built in the last twenty or thirty years – and so just about everyone who lives in SZ was born somewhere else. There are very few native “Shenzheners”, so the city is strangely quiet during the CNY, as so many leave to visit relations in other parts of China.
Year of the Dog Rangoli


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Educaring, Part 2

Image
Not so long ago, I wrote a post for my blog called Educaring . Please do not misunderstand me. I really do believe that teachers, youth workers, parents (and indeed anyone involved with young people) all have a duty to protect children and teenagers, to keep them safe. As I argued in my previous posting, I also believe that the task of protecting children is becoming more and more difficult - almost impossible, in fact. Yes, the Internet has a lot to do with it, I am sure, but there is another problem that is hardly ever discussed.  In a nutshell, anyone who genuinely cares about children finds it very hard to imagine how evil and how subtle child molesters and pedophiles really are. I think that is probably why many teachers and parents just do not know when a pedophile is "grooming" a child and why they often do not believe it, even when confronted with the unpleasant truth. Michael Green at Windlesham House School I knew Michael Green when I was teaching at Windlesh...
Read more

On the Cards, Part 1

Image
Getting our new Bulgarian residency cards from the Microwave Oven Woman Rejoice! Let's celebrate. Hallelujah! At long last, the Microwave Woman has given us our new Bulgarian residency cards (BRCs). As a special treat, just in case you do not know what a BRC looks like, here is my old one.  My dear wife suggested that I should "black out" certain bits, as there are lots of evil people out there on the Internet, all gathering my personal and financial details in order to swindle me or involve me in some dreadful scandal or some such nonsense. Of course, no one who reads my blog could ever do such a nasty thing!   Getting our new BRCs means that we can go ahead with our applications for our Russian visas. Then, maybe two or three weeks later, our passports will be returned to us, with new Russian visas stuck into them. The other good news is that the insurance agent in Dragoman did not lose my car registration document. When she had finished giving me my new car ...
Read more

Moving to Bulgaria

Image
A lady called Betty Bradshaw recently wrote this on the Facebook Group "Moving to Bulgaria" and my replies are in italics. Sorry if this sounds thick... but what is the very first thing we need to do before buying a house in Bulgaria? Is it the visas? Is it buy a house first? We are serious about moving over, but have no clue where to begun our journey. Dear Beckie Bradshaw,  You are not being "thick" at all. We all have to start somewhere, when we do something completely new and out of our comfort zone!  Anyway, the first thing you need to before buying a house in Bul garia is to read my blog  www.bulgariawithnoodles.blogspot.com   Then you should watch some of Susan Ashwell's lovely videos about Bulgaria on YouTube. (Her series is called "Escape to a simpler place and time.")  Thirdl y, you should reply to the message that I am just about to write to you. Here is the message (or messages) I wrote to Becky, together with her replies. Hello! My wife an...
Read more