By Alison Klayman (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-02-22 10:12

　
　　Alison Klayman (first from left) with her host family during her visit to a Shandong village. Photos courtesy of Alison Klayman

Yesterday in Beijing I celebrated the Lantern Festival, the 15th day of the first lunar month which marks the last day of the Chinese New Year celebration. I enjoyed eating chewy rice balls boiled in water, and tried organizing a mahjong game with my American roommates.

But when I went out that day and found myself packed shoulder to shoulder with other Beijing residents, I felt a certain nostalgia for the way I rang in the New Year two weeks earlier, in a small village.

Most foreigners in China use their Spring Festival holiday to vacation at a tourist spot in China or one of its neighboring countries, like Thailand or Vietnam. For my first chunjie (Spring Festival) in China I myself had a beautiful vacation in Lijiang, Yunnan province.

This year, however, my experience was quite different. I spent the festival at the hometown of a Chinese friend and former co-worker, Xu Wei. To get to the rural village Lusu, in Shandong province, we took an eight-hour overnight bus ride from Beijing to the small city of Laizhou.

Traversing 650 km we passed mostly darkened countryside, but since it was the night before New Year's Eve, the blackness was sprinkled with distant fireworks.

I knew a countryside New Year would be different from a city or a vacation celebration, but I was not sure exactly how it would differ. When Xu warned me I would be woken up on New Year's Eve at midnight by the fireworks, I didn't expect festivities to really run like clockwork. Sure enough, I woke up in the middle of the night to flashing lights and the sound of warfare blasts and booms and pops.

I checked my cellphone - 12:01 exactly.

That morning was full of little delights and surprises. At 5 am we got up to set off our own fireworks. The flares shot into the dark morning sky. When we lit a long string of firecrackers draped over the courtyard clothesline, I covered my ears in expectation of the spray of loud blasts. I didn't expect that after the firecrackers were spent, there would be a banner wishing a happy and prosperous new year left hanging.

Next I knew we would eat a dumpling (jiaozi) breakfast, a traditional New Year's food, but I didn't expect there would be prizes in the dumplings. First one cousin spat a chestnut onto the table and warned me to be careful when eating these jiaozi.

I couldn't tell if he was joking with me or not. But my first bite of dumpling revealed a hard candy inside. Xu's dad spat out a 5 cent piece. I bit into the most expensive dumpling, with a 1 kuai coin inside. This was supposed to be a good sign for my fortune this year.

   1 2   

   1 2