9 January 2014-
Just as Westerners may consider Christmas the most important holiday, I think you'd hear most Chinese tell you that Chinese New Year (CNY;which is also sometimes referred to as the Spring Festival) as their most important holiday. And as we like decorating for Christmas so do the Chinese decorate for CNY.
Today a group of friends is visiting Ancient Culture Street in search of items to sell at a fair at the school.
It's a beautiful day! Clear blue skies….and BITTERLY cold!
I just LOVE these old-style buildings with their colorful artwork:
I'm seeing red everywhere:
As you can see there's a lot of RED and GOLD in CNY decorations.
The red flowers in these boxes are apparently unique to Tianjin (but I could have misunderstood):
Lots and lots of paper cuttings….lots of paper cuttings of horses (it is the year of the horse after all!) and also lots of fish and flowers. I think fish is a symbol of good fortune or good luck and is very common in Chinese decor.
My good friend Frances modeling one of the red flowers in her hat: (isn't she lovely?) 🙂
Lots of RED decorations:
Well, that was a fun visit to ACS! We managed to find lots of goodies. We found lots of qipaos (Chinese dresses) and a dazzling assortment of silk bags and gifts. I even got another wooden moon cake mould to add to my small collection. I do enjoy coming to this tourist-y spot in Tianjin!!!! Thanks ladies for a fun outing!
Except….there is one thing that happened during our short shopping tour – one thing I hope I won't have to witness again. As we were walking around a young girl in a trio of young Chinese women decided she was done with her bowl of noodles and instead of throwing the used container into the near-by trash bin – she TOSSED IT ON THE GROUND AND WALKED AWAY!!!!! How truly disrespectful of your country and its heritage. Like I said, I hope to never see that sort of blatant disregard and disrespect again. grrrr…..