Chun Jie Kuai Le! 春节快乐!

Chinese people know how to PARRRRTTTAAAYYYY!!!!

This lantern is part of a light display, about 8 feet tall at the front gate of our complex.

 Spring Festival is THE holiday in China. Sending a huge migration of people bustling home to celebrate and ring in the Lunar New Year. Families gather to make Jiaozi (or Chinese dumplings), special red banners are hung over door ways, and beautiful red lanterns hang overhead. Lights go up over trees, gates, and bushes. Markets are bursting with people in preparation and lucky (fake) money is burned on street corners to send on to ancestors who have passed.

I watched as our local street cleaner rode around and around the block on his little bike cart, sweeping up the piles of ash left behind. Every twenty minutes or so a new couple would pop up, set out their lucky money, smash some bottle of alcohol and quickly set it all ablaze. It was a fascinating parade of Chinese culture......

All of this tradition dates way back,( how far? I have no idea!). There is folk tale about a beast called Nian, coming to attack the village. All of this red and gold is meant to scare him away, along with fireworks. Lots and lots of fireworks! In our area the show stretched from 5pm to 2am, and started back up at 5 am. This lasted on and off for about a week, some days of Spring Festival days are more significant than others, with hours of fireworks, others were fewer and sporadic. This is what an average morning walk looks, like, red bits of paper littering the street, (this was still smodlering as we passed through).....

 We visited a Lunar Market in the days leading up to Spring Festival. It is the largest outdoor market I have visited here and it was "real" China at it's best. I was so glad the girls and I had the opportunity to see it. Where we live and most of where we tread in Qingdao is pretty "westernized" so for me this was beautiful to behold. There were areas so packed we walked linked hand in hand, creeping through the stalls, at those times I held tight to the girls, so I don't have good pictures, but it was sea of people swarming all around us..I'll let the pictures do the talking from here...

 Chinese Free Parking:)

The girls loved these, but there was no way I was going to carry one around for hours!

GOLD FISH!!! GOLD GOLD FISH! They were amazing!

These guys were super cute!

Name this food! Any guesses?  ;)

This is what a very typical wet market looks like...

Anyone hungry yet? MMMM! Blood Pudding!

Knife a little dull? No problem!

Spices, Peppers and Mushrooms

Peppers, and peanuts with peanut oil ground to order, it smelled delish!

This area was like a bunch a little yard sales, lots of used items.

We came, we saw, but we did not buy t-shirts!

On the 23rd before our party the Rosie, Liv, and I went for a stroll. Well bundled, and ears covered we were greeted by some neighbors who were eager to share the holiday with us and gave the girls some fireworks," for kids!" 

 

A whole box of kid-friendly fire works :)!

We let the biggest kid of us all, (Chris) set them off for us. He bought a few boxes to add to the show.

Our loot!

We let the girls do the sparklers, but the big ones for  we left for Dad!

 The girls were squealing and screaming, it was a riot! I'm sure their first Spring Festival was a very memorable one! :) Happy Dragon Year to you and yours! <3 The Colozza's