New Years Day!

On New Years Day I was startled awake by the blasting in of the New Year with all sorts of explosives. For breakfast we had Jaozi as is the custom and my Chinese little sister Mimi put on her new clothes which she was thrilled about.

Then I went with Cui Guo Hua to perform another very important New Years custom, that is to go around to all of your friends and relatives and wish them a happy New Year. At each of the homes they offer you fruit, candy and nuts from a platter and beg you to sit and stay awhile. At each of the houses you refuse and leave within five minutes.
We visited Cui Guo Hua’s uncle’s home and I took this picture to show you a typical Chinese farmer’s home. It consists of three rooms, the one that you enter is the kitchen and then there is a bedroom on either side, the bedrooms typically also serve as sitting rooms to entertain guests. The bed is a huge brick block that takes up on whole side of the room and is connected to the stove in the kitchen by tubes underneath to keep it warm. The front is ALL windows and typically faces East so as to let in the light and the warmth and there is a huge pile of corn in front of every home in this area of the country they are all corn farmers.

We also visited Cui Guo Hua’s grandfather. He was so sweet and nice and I thought he looked like cute old Chinese man.

For lunch and dinner we had jaozi again and I had hid a quarter in one of them, Cui Guo Hua’s mother found it, Lucky her!







That night when I got home, Mimi wanted to go and light fireworks in patio by her apartment complex, so her father took us downstairs to light some. Mr Hui works in the forest service and regularly gets calls in the middle of the night to go fight fires and Mrs. Hui is a nurse so you can imagine how mild the fireworks they let Mimi light are. It was a completely different experience than the night before.





The next day Cui Guo Hua’s friend wanted me to go with his parents, his wife and he to visit the village where he was born that was up in the mountains and has only had a paved road between it and Ping Quan for a few years so you can imagine how isolated they have been. In Ping Quan the people stare at me as they walk past. In the small villages they actually stop in their tracks and act as though they have seen a ghost. His friend's father was born into what was a wealthy family before the revolution and so, because of his last name, was ordered by the communist party to go with his wife to a tiny, poor village up in the mountains to be a doctor for what the Party called "reeducation." This picture was taken in front of the home of the lady who babysat Cui Guo Hua's friend.















This is the hospital that his father worked at and is still being used as a hospital. Inside it was freezing and very dirty and there were tons of broken empty glass medicine bottles.