Holidays

A post-holiday update

/ edebock / 8 Comments

Christmas has come and gone and the decorations are all put away. Christmas itself was a quiet one for hubby and I this year. It was just the two of us on Christmas morning, but we were joined by another couple later in the day for turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Then, two days later, the house was full with two of our grown children, their spouses, and six of our eight grandchildren here for the weekend! Every bed was taken as well as a couple of air mattresses and we managed to squeeze all twelve of us around the table at mealtime. Board games and trips to the tobogganing hill were enjoyed and it was a delight to see the cousins having so much fun together. But…

As grandchildren often do, one or two of them came with coughs and runny noses and Gram managed to catch one heck of a cold! Thankfully, the symptoms didn’t appear until after everyone left, but I was under the weather for several days. I’m finally on the mend, no longer depending on decongestants to breathe and although the cough still lingers, I don’t feel like I’m hacking up a lung. I’d normally say that I don’t feel my age, but this cold drained me of energy and definitely left me feeling old. Hopefully that’s just temporary! 

Speaking of age, we’re celebrating this guy today.

461882364_10161552605720915_2029796687439930519_n

It’s hubby’s 75th birthday today, definitely a milestone! It will be another quiet celebration though. At one point, I had thought about inviting friends in to celebrate with us, but between sickness and a house that’s gradually being stripped bare in preparation for upcoming renovations, that’s not happening.  

We’re in the process of emptying closets, clearing off shelves and countertops, and moving everything except our large pieces of furniture into the basement. Walls will be painted, ancient carpets replaced with wood flooring, baseboards and trim replaced, interior doors repainted, and the front door replaced. While the work is being done, we plan to be out of the way, but more about that later. 

I will be blogging from time to time over the next few weeks, but I’m not sure if there will be any fashion posts. I do have a couple of ideas rattling around in my brain, but right now my clothes are all over the place and I’m not sure what I’ll be able to pull together. Do stay tuned though!

First hike of the year

/ edebock / Leave a comment

Here in Canada, tomorrow is a federal holiday known as Victoria Day. Initially, the holiday always fell on Queen Victoria’s birthday (May 24), but since 1952 it’s been celebrated on the Monday preceding May 25. The connection to royalty has been gradually lost over the years and now most people simply refer to it as the May long weekend. It’s the unofficial start of the summer season and the first weekend of the camping season for many. Rather than camping, since the nights are still very cold, we’re visiting my younger brother and his wife in the small village of Irvine in the southeast corner of Alberta. This afternoon, while our sister-in-law was working, the other three of us set out for our first hike of the season.

The 464-acre Chinook conservation site, a native grassland area, lies just 8 kilometres south of Irvine. Very different from the hiking that we do closer to home, there are no trails, just wide open expanses begging to be explored.

IMG_4039

Leaving the vehicle, we set off across the grassy plain toward the hills some distance away.  Of course, once we reached the top of the first bluff, we had to carry on up the next one, and then the third.

IMG_4023

Here’s the view from the top of the third hill with the second one in the foreground and the first, much lower one below it. Can you spot our vehicle in the distance? How about the little bit of cactus at the bottom of the photo?

IMG_4025

Here’s a closer look at some of the ground cover. This is snake country, but fortunately, we didn’t see any of those!

IMG_4024

After returning to the vehicle, we crossed the road and made our way across more rough grassland and through the bush to Ross Creek where we saw lots of evidence of beaver activity.

IMG_4031

In the final photo, you can see one of the peaks that we climbed way in the background.

IMG_4037

Along the way, we also saw clear signs of the deer and pronghorn antelope that inhabit the area and were reminded of the old western song, Home on the Range. “Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam, where the deer and the antelope play!”

If the weather cooperates, tomorrow will be another adventure.

Dragon Boat Festival

/ edebock / Leave a comment

Today was the first day of China’s three day Duanwu or Dragon Boat Festival holiday. The festival itself which falls on Wednesday, commemorates ancient China’s patriotic poet, Qu Yuan, who lived from 340 to 278 BC. Though stories vary somewhat, according to legend, Qu was accused of treason and banished from the ancient state of Chu for failing to support the king’s proposed alliance with the increasingly powerful state of Qin. During his years of exile, he wrote many enduring patriotic poems. When the state of Qin later captured the capital of Chu, Qu committed suicide by drowning himself in the Milou River. HIs death occurred on the 5th day of the 5th month of the Chinese lunar calendar which this year falls on June 12. Apparently the festival takes its name from the idea that people rowed their boats out into the river in an unsuccessful attempt to either save their beloved poet or retrieve his body.

At the beginning of the semester, when I saw the Dragon Boat Festival on our school calendar, I had visions of watching colourful boats filled with rowers racing on a local waterway. Sadly, that doesn’t happen in Dalian.

It would seem that the primary way that people here celebrate the festival is by eating zongzi, triangular packets of glutinous rice wrapped in bamboo leaves. The stores and markets have been filled with them for the past few days. It is said that this tradition originated when local people dropped sticky rice packets into the river to feed the fish and keep them from consuming Qu’s body!

We were given several homemade zongzi yesterday. Though the rice tasted okay, having taken on a mild grassy flavour from the bamboo leaves, we weren’t very impressed by its texture. For me, the word glutinous even sounds gluey and that’s exactly what it was!

A second tradition is the wearing of five-coloured silk cords around the wrists. These are being sold everywhere right now by women who have obviously been busy making them by hand. I bought mine for 1 yuan (about 17 cents) each and will wear them on Wednesday. Apparently, when the festival is over, they’re supposed to be cut off and thrown away to get rid of bad luck.

When we went down to the street market to pick up vegetables and meat this morning, we noticed lots of bundles of leaves being sold. We guessed that they too must have something to do with the festival. They didn’t look very edible and we had no idea what their purpose was until I read up on the celebration online and learned that they were mugwort leaves and calamus. Apparently, people put bundles of them over their doors to protect themselves against disease. I wonder if they have any effect on shingles? Perhaps I should have bought some! Actually, the stems and leaves of these plants are said to dispel an aroma that is thought to purify the air and discourage flies and mosquitoes so perhaps there’s something to the tradition.

Although this festival has long been part of Chinese culture, the government of the People’s Republic of China, established in 1949, refused to officially recognize it as a public holiday. It was only reinstated as a national holiday in 2008. Since it falls on a Wednesday this year, many people, including us, worked on Saturday and Sunday so that they could have today and tomorrow off and make it a three day vacation.

Since our tour of China is coming up soon, we decided not to go anywhere this holiday. Instead, we’re staying here in Dalian and being tourists in our own town but I’ll share more about that in future posts.

Tomb Sweeping Day

/ edebock / 7 Comments

Tomorrow, April 4th, is Qingming Festival in China. Pronounced Chingming and known as Tomb Sweeping Day in English, this is a day to honour dead ancestors by travelling to the family tomb to sweep, clean and place flowers and offerings of food and drink on the grave.

Burning paper that is meant to resemble money in hope that the deceased is not lacking anything, is also a common practice; so common, in fact, that the authorities are urging people to take precautions and not allow fires to get out of control. Apparently, across China, a total of 520 million people visited their ancestors’ tombs during last year’s festival and 200 forest fires were reported during the three day holiday!

This week, we see huge stacks of the gold coloured paper everywhere. Looking something like fancy paper napkins, it’s piled in the marketplace and outside stores waiting for people to purchase it and burn it, sometimes on the graves but not always. Paper burning was also part of the Lantern Festival that took place at the end of the Chinese New Year celebrations. That night, as fireworks exploded overhead, bonfires lined the streets outside our building and we already saw a couple of people burning a pile of the paper a couple of evenings ago on the sidewalk directly across the street from where they purchased it.

In addition to remembering dead ancestors, in modern times Qingming has also been seen as a time to pay respects to those who’ve died in incidents considered sensitive in China, incidents such as the Tiananmen Square massacre that took place in Beijing on Tomb Sweeping Day in 1976.

Qingming is celebrated on the 104th day following the Winter Solstice or the 15th day after the Spring Equinox. In addition to being a time of remembrance, it’s also a time to celebrate the coming of spring and in farming communities, it marks the time to begin plowing and seeding. Outdoor pursuits including kite flying are popular Qingming activities. Though spring seems a little late this year, the past couple of days have been the warmest since we arrived in China. The grass is finally starting to turn green and I was delighted to notice tiny buds on one of the trees we passed on our walk this afternoon.

We hope that the beautiful spring weather continues for the next few days as we’re off to Dandong for our three day Tomb Sweeping holiday. Dandong, a 4 hour bus trip north of here, is located just across the Yalu River from North Korea but more about that when we get back!

Where do we live?

/ edebock / 10 Comments

Our mailing address sounds pretty fancy:

Room 305,
EIE, School of Continuing Education
Liaoning Normal University,
850 Huanghe Road,
Dalian, Liaoning, China 116029

but that’s just where we work. Where do we actually live?

We were given a sheet of paper with our apartment address written in both Chinese and English that we could show to a taxi driver if needed. It says that our apartment address is: the little street of Liaoning Normal University, Lan Xiu Street, Huanghe Road, Shahekou District, The Red Building!

We went for lunch with one of our fellow teachers today. When he asked where we live, we described our location just off the edge of the university campus. “Oh, is yours the building where it looks like you’re entering a crack house?” he asked. Yes, I think that would be us!

We enter through a broken door and climb the narrow cement staircase to our apartment on the top floor. Many of the landings between floors are piled high with stuff. I’m not sure if it’s things that people have discarded or if the landings are just being used as extra storage space. I must admit that as we hauled our suitcases up the 67 stairs to the fifth floor the night we arrived here, I really wondered what we’d find at the top. In comparison to the stairwell, our apartment really isn’t bad at all but I’ll save that for another post.

In the meantime, let me tell you what’s going on right now. At the moment, it literally sounds like we’re living in the middle of a war zone. Today is the final day of the Chinese New Year holiday. There have been fireworks going off all around us ever since we arrived but we’re assuming that that must be coming to an end tonight because now they’re literally exploding non stop all over the neighbourhood! This started well before dark. I knew that fireworks were a big deal in China but I never imagined anything like this! I hope it comes to an end before we go to bed tonight or there won’t be any sleeping happening. I’m not holding my breath though. The first ones started going off at 6 o’clock this morning just as the sun began to come up. There are also bonfires burning on several street corners below us tonight.

I wonder how many more surprises this strange place we’ve chosen to live has in store for us?