Folk traditions and customs of the New Year meal vary across China: Northerners eat dumplings, Southerners eat rice dumpling, Nian-Gao; In Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and other places, people eat Tangyuan, either deep-fried or broiled. In one word, “Customs are different from area to area even if they are located only more than 50 kilometers away from one another.”
Here, I will show you some examples how Chinese people in different regions start their New Year with the first meal.
According to Chinese calendar, this year, Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) is on February 14th, the same date for western Valentine’s Day. Theoretically, these co-incidences should happen every 19 years on average, but the next Spring Festival/V-Day won’t come until 2048, which is 38 years later.
Now Chinese people especially young lovers are facing a dilemma.
China is the third largest country in territory in the world after Russia and Canada. However, few people think of China as a desert nation, yet it is among the world’s largest. More than 27%, or 2.5 million square kilometers, of the country comprises useless sand (just 7% of Chinese land feeds about a quarter of the world’s population).
Ironically, here, I am not going to talk about environment conservation. I will show you five most “beautiful” deserts in China.
When we see some people showing amazing skills, such as in sports, playing instruments, juggling, acrobatics, etc., we might talk to ourselves: Geeez, I can never do this!
However, you might not know how many months and years they have been practicing the skill off the stage. They failed frequently and painfully in the beginning. Then they failed less. Someday they started to shine. And finally they made it on the stage in front of you. It’s a matter of practice.
Welcome to the January 21, 2010 edition of china carnival.
We have four posts today. Zhu continues to tell us her Beijing stories and this time it is about the well known Tian’An Men. Devin presents one of his days traveling in China. Matt talked about the interesting habit of Chinese to ask other people’s income. In the end, “Watch me eat” shares some good Chinese food somewhere in NY state.