Chinese New Year

Happy New Year! May the Year of the Rabbit be very good to all of you!
The sentiment comes a little on the late side since the actual new year was on tuesday or wednesday (I forget) but I only just celebrated yesterday. I went to this event for USFQ's Confucius Institute (Kongzi Xueyuan 孔子学院) yesterday morning and found out that my jiaozi-folding skills are unfortunately sub-par, but that I'm pretty good with chopstick (kuaizi 筷子) dexterity! After that event the fam and I went up to "Gran Shanghai", which I am pleased to report, offers a good selection of authentic Chinese food. Like really authentic. It made me happy! I had some chicken with sesame sauce and some steamed jiaozi. I also ate a lot of my dad's roasted Peking Duck (Beijing Kaoya 北京烤鸭) and of my brother's vegetables with tofu. Good stuff!
The fact that I celebrated the Lunar New Year with my family didn't strike me as odd until I got home. We'd never really celebrated it before (maybe once, I think?) as a family, although I've gotten used to celebrating it at Vassar. The Chinese and Japanese department made this really big event where they usually made us sing Chinese songs and then fed us insane amounts of Chinese food. There was also the ASA (Asian Student Alliance) celebration which I usually went to too. The reason that celebrating it this year was odd was because I realized we were celebrating the tradition of another culture as if it were our own. That sort of blew my mind a bit because it just shows how much the process of cross-culturalization and globalization has started to affect our individual lives. Just an interesting thing to think about - how much of other cultures we are slowly adopting as our own. It is not to say that we shouldn't...it is just an interesting observation on the evolution of our own identity.
Anyhow, I'm getting into full China/Chinese mode again. I've downloaded some really helpful podcasts from Popup Chinese that I've been listening to as I work and also just getting into the swing of practicing my Chinese. Although, it gives me hope that the owner of "Gran Shanghai" yesterday said that I had excellent pronunciation (she said it was almost as good as a native). It bodes well that I haven't lost my accent!

Categories: China, Chinese, chinese food, New Year's Eve