The Chinese New Year, authentic Chinese style

Sunday was arguably the most important day of the year for Chinese people - Chinese New Year's Eve. At about 4 in the afternoon my entire baba's family came over. He cooked a huge meal and everyone ate ungodly amounts of utterly delicious Chinese food. At about 8 I went outside our apartment building with my sister, baba, two cousins, and an uncle to light fireworks. The Chinese New year is interesting in that it is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the 4th of July mashed together into one enormous holiday. There is gift giving (not quite as much as Christmas), excessive food consumption, and an insane amount of firework lightage-offage (definitely not a word). So... we headed outside, lit off our fireworks, and then went back inside to watch the CCTV New Years show that broadcasts throughout China. My sister mentioned that at midnight the sky would light up with more fireworks than I had ever seen before in my life, but I truly did not comprehend the enormity of what she tried to convey until I saw it myself. At about 11 pm my dad's family left, and we began cleaning up and getting ready to go to my maternal grandparent's house for the rest of the night (apparently no one sleeps on New Year's Eve/ New Year's morning). At 11:50 we piled in the car, and raced down the fourth ring road towards my grandma's house. Sure enough, at midnight, the sky exploded. It literally cannot be described with words. Front, back, left, right - every possible place you could look had fireworks exploding in every color imaginable. It was AMAZING. And what's even more - the government had nothing to do with it. Every firework in the sky was lit off by private families. My sister says every year the same phenomenon happens. I have to say, I think this is something that every person should see before they die, because it is truly mind blowing. And for some reason it made my sister and I giddy and happy. So anyway, we got to my mom's parents house and had the second huge feast of the night, then the adults started playing a classic Chinese game called Majiang. It is a fun game, but moves at an uncomfortably quick pace and forces your brain to use math skills incessantly. At about 3 AM, I conked out on my grandparent's bed. My mom, aunt, uncle, and grandpa continued to play. I woke up at 7 to the sound of the adults still playing Majiang (they played continuously for 6 hours, not kidding). My family has a tradition of going to the Lama temple (a huge Buddhist temple in Beijing) every New Year's morning, so at about 7:15 we stumbled sleep-deprived into the car and went to the temple. After walking through a hutong for 40 minutes and waiting in multiple obnoxiously large crowds of people, we got into the temple, made our wishes, bowed three times to the Buddha, witnessed a pick-pocket being taken out by the police, and left. From what I hear, Chinese belief is that if you make a wish at the Lama temple on New Year's morning, It will really come true. We'll see. At noon that day, I finally got to climb into bed and promptly conked out until 6pm. And that was my New Year's Day:)

I'll write more in 3 weeks. Until then, toodles.