CHINESE NEW YEAR CELEBRATIONS

Over the Chinese New Year holiday I was given 10 days off work to do a bit of traveling and sight seeing to immerse myself into the traditional Chinese culture. I was so delighted to have been invited to my friend’s family home in Chaoyang to celebrate the New Year.

The night began with a glorious dinner of about 12 different dishes. We ate so many delicious vegetables, meat selections, noodles and rice. I had never eaten so much food in one sitting. It was definitely a good test for my taste buds! Very weird foods and flavouring, but I did enjoy most of the dishes. I wasn’t a fan of tofu, sugar coated tomatoes or toffee coated sweet potato!

Later in the night, about 10pm we set out to the streets and lit off fireworks! Street fireworks are so dangerous and I was absolutely terrified. I have this weird phobia of flames and cannot stand lighting a match, let alone a firework. I stood in the background and hid myself between the cars while I watched the pretty sparks in the sky. We spent about an hour on the roads watching the competition of fireworks from one end of the street to the other. It was so beautiful, but very loud!

We headed back into my friend’s family apartment and made dumplings from scratch. This was so much fun, but I was really bad at keeping it all together without making a mess. I was given some really in-depth teaching to the technique of it all, so I eventually got the hang of it. Around midnight her mother had cooked the hundreds of dumplings we had made and we had another bulk sitting. By this time, I had the biggest Asian food baby, I couldn’t move. So many delicious foods were eaten this night, no regrets! The fireworks were absolutely stunning, so much better than the Brisbane river fire. I was very fortunate to have been given such an opportunity with a local Chinese family celebration these traditions. I was home about 2am and went into hibernation for the next few days.

#whitegirlinasia #chinesenewyear