The End of an Era, the Beginning of a New World

Well first of all, thank you for taking a look at this last blog post that I will be putting up and especially thank you if you have been following my blog for the last year.  It really means a lot to me when people read what I have to say and when I get positive responses from people, it just makes me so happy that I can't even express how I want to thank you for making my life so special.

I would like to state that before I get into the main body of this post that this was written at the end of January and I just never got around to publishing it and putting it up due to pure laziness.  Some things in this blog have since changed which I will address at the end but for now, I hope you can think back to mid January and enjoy this last post about a great Chinese holiday and time of tradition! =)

Happy year of the Dragon!

What an exciting time in China right now. Everyone is bustling around, many shops are closed and fireworks are constantly blasting both night and day. I never knew exactly how important this holiday was here until I actually lived it. It is nothing like our new years celebration although the countdown at midnight is a common theme they both share. This celebration is much like our Christmas as families are all reunited, massive feasts are prepared and gifts are shared amongst loved ones. Hopefully this post will fill in some blanks that many of you have when thinking about the grand scheme of this holiday and possibly even about some of the culture. Let's get this started with a quick anecdote and a quick warning to dog lovers, maybe you should skip over it and move to the next paragraph...

Well I got into Ningbo late Saturday afternoon with my great friend Jue. Her and I went straight to her parents house to say hello and relax for a bit. When I got there, we immediately sat down and said hello to everyone and chit chatted for a bit until it was time to finish making dinner. Jue's mom and grandma starting preparing a dish that looked odd to me and when we sat down to dinner I found out what it was: It was dog meat from a special province where the dogs are bred to be eaten. Well, Jue said I didn't have to eat it if I didn't want to and in fact she herself refused to eat it because she has two pet cats and loves pets so much that she couldn't bear to eat it. Well her dad was just munching away on it and he told me I should try some and since I'm not one to shy away from trying new things, I grabbed a big piece and bit into it. Ok ok, I know some of you are thinking “Oh my gato Tony, how could you do that?!?! Are you sick?” Well the truth of it is that I was pretty reluctant to eat it but considering it was there and the dog was bred for food and not as a pet, I decided to do it. I won't be eating it again but all I can say is that it tastes just like beef hahaha. Ok now that I've lost all of my readers I'll move on. I promise I won't be talking about anything as grotesque as that.

Alright! So right after a delicious dinner, Jue and I headed out to meet up with some of her friends and my beautiful lady friend as well. I was pretty excited! We just went for some tea and then we went to KTV which just means a karaoke place with a private room and more friends that I met a couple of months ago at the wedding came out and we all had a great time. KTV isn't really my thing but hey what do you know, they have dice ;)

After a good night's sleep, it was time to get cracking on the festivities of new years. I went over to Acall's house for lunch and met with her parents and her cousin and then we went out to do some shopping for the night's festivities. I bought a couple of bottles of Chinese liquor to give Jue's and Acall's fathers as a token of my good will and Jue bought some rice cakes which are very traditional for Chinese New Year. Then, we headed off back to Jue's house and relaxed for a bit while dinner was being prepared. At this point, many members of Jue's family were all over and so I met two of his cousins, two aunts and two uncles. It was definitely a good time and they talked with me a bunch which was very nice. I felt honored to be among such a nice family and to be sharing their holiday with them even though I'm just a lowly foreigner. They kept telling me to eat, drink and be merry and I gladly took them up on it. The dishes were great and there were special ones prepared for the holiday which are quite traditional including many types of sweet rice and meat. It was all delicious.

After dinner, we all went out and had a little fun with some fireworks. When I say a little fun, I really mean an absolute blast because Chinese fireworks are no joke. Basically, any fireworks you can buy in Wyoming are the ones they would give little kids here to play with because they're harmless in comparison. We bought several roman candles which we proceeded to then just light in the middle of the sidewalk in front of Jue's complex and just launched them into the road in front of us. It was a riot! I must have shot off three or four full tubes of them which held about seven charges inside them. We just lit it and held it up in the air like the torch on the statue of liberty and they shot out and exploded in the air. These were still kind of the kiddy ones so we moved up to bigger and better things.

We bought several boxes of these mortar type fireworks which look exactly like the ones that pros use when you light them up. I was like a kid on Christmas morning when we lit those ones off. I just looked toward the sky teary-eyed and grinning like an idiot as each one of the projectiles reached it's apex and exploded in a blinding flash of color. I think everyone in Jue's family was looking at me like I was an idiot because they do this every year. It was so glorious though and I truly wish we could get the same stuff in the states for 4^th of July. Even the sparklers were about ten times the size of the ones we have at home. It was definitely a spectacle that is still fresh in my mind.

Now that the fireworks were over, we went back inside and it was time to start making a traditional New Year's Eve midnight snack: home made dumplings. The filling was made then the dough was kneaded and we started a nice big assembly line to start making them. Jue's dad was in charge of the dough and he would break off little pieces and then roll them into small balls in his hands before he would put them under a roller and made them into nice flat round pieces of dough with which we put the filling in and they showed me the proper way to wrap the dough around the filling. They kept telling me to go have fun with all of the kids because they were in the other room talking but I told them I really wanted to help and that I was having lots of fun with them. You know what? Quick writers note here, I'm having trouble expressing this in English as this whole night unfolded in Chinese and thinking back on it, I was having all of these conversations in a Chinese language mindset. Gosh, I hope all of my bilingual friends and family know what I'm talking about. Maybe I'm just crazy.. anyway.... Finally Acall showed up and when they told me to go have fun with her (they all knew I had a thing for her because that's all Jue was talking about at dinner hahaha) I dropped what I was doing and we headed out for some more debauchery.

We went over to another friend's house and greeted her parents and wished them a happy new year and then we just went and talked while all the adults watch a show which is much like our New Year's programming that we watch on December 31^st. It provides entertainment and performances and a final countdown as midnight draws near. Well, after drinking a fair amount of warm yellow Chinese wine, we said our goodbyes and headed off back to Jue's place for midnight fireworks and the delicious dumplings we had prepared earlier.

For 15 days after new years, you keep telling people 恭喜发财Gong xi fa cai (gong she fah tsai) which wishes them good fortune in this upcoming new year. When you say it, you also have to put your right hand in a fist then cover it with your left hand and shake them up and down together in a gesture of praise. It's pretty awesome and when I do it to all of the shop owners after I buy something out here, they all laugh and are pleasantly surprised that I know the custom. The day of Chinese New Years, everyone exchanges Hongbaos (mostly just parents to unmarried children) and the next few days are used to rest and enjoy time with the family.

I am so lucky to have been able to celebrate this holiday with a true Chinese family and really see what it's like for them through my own eyes. Anyone on the travel channel can eat their heart out at that one. Honestly, out of all of my experiences thus far, the best ones have been hanging out with my Chinese friends and seeing what their culture is like through their eyes, not people who observe their culture. So in a way, I am a hypocrite because I write these blogs for you telling you what it's like when I'm just the one who observes from a distance. However, I try to do it with the intention of sharing it as if you're there with me seeing it for yourself. Don't get me wrong, the Great Wall is breathtaking and has thousands of years of history behind it, but a simple dinner with a Chinese family tells a story 100 times better.

Well to my Grammy's dismay (along with that of Acall's mother), Acall and I are officially dating now so the pool can finally end! Who ended up betting that it would take me roughly 9 months to find one? You good sir or madam are the winner! Collect your money. Acall and I are quite fond of each other and this week has really been great spending time with her every day and just hanging out. She's lots of fun and the other night we even hopped on Skype to chat with my mother and father and they took a liking to her immediately. Like I mentioned, her mother is not very fond of us dating (in fact she is quite livid) but her father thinks it's up to Acall to decide and he's ok with it. Thank goodness I drank all of that rice liquor with him! I'm currently writing a letter to Acall's mother in Chinese trying to explain that I'm not the savage beast of a foreigner she seems to think me to be and that I care for her daughter. Hopefully that'll win some brownie points... but it remains to be seen I guess.

Anyway, the lack of pictures in this post was because... well, I'll give you two chances to guess who forgot to take their camera with them to the Chinese New Year celebration.... ya, exactly. I know that it sucks I can't show the scenery but it's also awesome because the fireworks were being shot off right next to the apartment buildings almost in the street. Safety laws? Forget 'em. Too much noise? No way. Dangerous? Only if you target someone with them.

Well, I hope you all had a great few weeks getting back to school and work after the holidays ended. As for me, my own job search continues. We'll see what I can find but hopefully I find something soon. Considering things with Acall and I are getting more serious, I'll still be mostly searching for jobs here but who knows, maybe I'll be state side by the end of February... We'll have to wait and see how the future unfolds.

But seriously, don't point fireworks at people.

Tony G.

Hahaha, I just reread that for the first time in a long time and it brings memories FLOODING back in.  What a crazy few days.  I left some stuff out of that post in order to preserve a good image so if you want the dirty details, let me know hehehe.  

Well, let's see here.  Things that have changed since this post are that I returned to the USA before the end of my visa and I am still here and now looking for jobs here.  I was really looking forward to a nice future with my lady friend but alas, we have hit a snag and decided that it's best for us to part ways.  It turns out we were hopeful that the other person would make the sacrifice and commit to living the rest of their days in the other person's home country.  Well, I loved living in China and I would like to do it again, but not for the rest of my life.  Acall and I talked it out for a few days and decided that it would be best to end it now while our relationship is still budding and before we get even more serious.

It was a bit of a blow to the heart but if you've been keeping up with my blog, you know that I'm not going to let it get me down and you know that I'm still in high spirits and looking forward to the next thing that comes my way!  To be honest, it gives me another jolt of excitement to know that one more thing of my life is undecided and that it will eventually come to me in a surprise package hopefully with confidence, a great personality and a great set of.... brains.  Yup.  

So what's in the next chapter of life?  Well, it's time to take my love of languages and this country to the next level and with some advice from my uncle, I'm looking into some jobs on the west coast (San Diego mainly) working for the Department of Homeland Security.  I've found some good linguist jobs for the DEA and some border patrol jobs that look particularly interesting to me so I'm going to keep searching and hopefully utilize my languages to make this country a safer place while at the same time keep doing what I love: having life be a new challenge every day, speaking foreign languages and of course meeting new people to talk to everyday.  That's just the tops!

Again, I really want to express my gratitude to all of my friends, family and of anyone else who supported this blog without even knowing me in person.  Please know that without readers, there are no writers who feel fulfilled with their work - no one writes for themselves.  It's all for you, it always has been.  Thank you for giving me the chance to be heard.  I love you all and I would really, really be elated if any of you wanted to get together now that I'm back in the states or even if you just want to chat over the phone.  I love talking and listening... but mostly talking.

Special thanks to Mrs. Luallin, Seth Yoder, Liz Bickel, Marcella Burg, Scott Flanigan, Andy "Poots Magoots" Patton and Blair Bacon for always reading my posts, discussing them with me after and always being there when I needed a friend to talk to.  I hate to brag but, my life is awesome due to those I surround myself with.  I hope my reflection on your life mirrors this image.

When something ends, it's sad to try and describe what it meant to you and what you will lose, but with the end of this blog comes what I hope will be inspiration to others to express themselves in words, in love and in life.  I can only hope that once I am gone, I can leave this behind.

Always be you, but always be different.

Tony G.