Getting ready for Chinese New Year

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:IMG_9756

I'm seeing red everywhere:IMG_9759

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):
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 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.

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My good friend Frances modeling one of the red flowers in her hat: (isn't she lovely?) 🙂IMG_9765

Lots of RED decorations:IMG_9767

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…..