Susan's Shanghai Blog - Week 107

This was our last Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year) in China. The source of Chinese New Year is itself centuries old and gains significance because of several myths and traditions. Traditionally, the festival was a time to honor deities as well as ancestors. It is a time traditionally to spend time with families. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly cleanse the house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for good incoming luck. Windows and doors will be decorated with red color paper-cuts and couplets with popular themes of "good fortune" or "happiness", "wealth", and "longevity." Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes.

Each year has one of the animals Chinese Zodiac, and this year is the year of the Horse. In the decorations, you will see a familiar theme of red, firecrackers, and horses. Firecrackers are usually strung on a long fused string so it can be hung down. Each firecracker is rolled up in red papers, as red is auspicious, with gunpowder in its core. Once ignited, the firecracker lets out a loud popping noise and, as they are usually strung together by the hundreds, the firecrackers are known for their deafening explosions that are thought to scare away evil spirits. Red is the predominant color used in New Year celebrations. Red is the emblem of joy, and this color also symbolizes virtue, truth and sincerity.

Our friends at Acme (who does our apartment management) brought us a horse decoration as well as a decoration for the door. The diamond shape is very traditional for door decorations, and you can see the 4 horses and a Buddha (they told me this is the Buddha for wealth and properity). Then at work, I got this little red horse.

IFC Mall, as always, did alot with decorations for the new year. On the very bottom floor, there is an open area where they had a display with pink cherry blossoms and drums. The little kids could come up and bang on the drums. Upstairs, near the LV store, they had a large display with gold horses. They also had another display of gold horses on the other side of the mall.

These are out front of Green City and just inside the shopping plaza. Again, you can see lots of red and the horses in each of the decorations.

Not exactly Chinese New Year, but I purchased a ticket for the ballet Swan Lake with the St. Petersburg (Russia) ballet company. Tom had to work so I went by myself. It was held at the Shanghai Grand Theatre and I grabbed a couple pictures outside, in the lobby area, and within the theater prior to the performance. No pictures of the performance were allowed.

Decorations around our apartment building:

These are in another little shopping area just south of our apartment, where we go for a nice little Italian restaurant.

Fireworks normally is on the eve of Chinese New Year and the 3rd evening. However, it seems like they put them off every day and every evening! These are from Chinese New Year's eve, and they are a couple different areas that we could see from our balcony. As you can see, it wasn't all that clear. They had actually requested that people limit the fireworks this year to help with the air quality. In previous years, the air quality index had turned very "hazardous" from the days prior to Chinese New Year to after the holidays and they said it was due to the particles added to the air from the fireworks.

On the first day of Chinese New Year, we headed over to the Yuyuan gardens. We knew that it was going to be a zoo, but they had a lantern festival over there. As we walked through the shops going into the garden area, you could see lots of shops selling decorations, including red lanterns, little cartoon Buddha's, firecracker-decorations, and stuffed horses. You can see the mass of people on the road, it was almost impossible to get through.

Along one of the perimeter streets, there were decorations up on the front of the buildings, which were all really nice to look at.

In the middle, there was this big display with cartoon kids with golden bowls. You see them in alot of decoration displays, and I am told that they indicate wealth and prosperity. They even had a street with these golden bowls as lanterns.

Now the lantern festival ... it is called the New-Year Folk-Custom Lantern Party. There is a long history with the celebration of the lantern festival, which is on the 15th of the first lunar month. The old city area has kept alive the tradition of admiring lanterns and holding hilarious lantern parties. During the day, you could walk through and admire all of the different lanterns. It seemed like every alley within the Yuyuan Garden shopping area had different lantern designs, so we tried to take a picture of almost every one.

In this one area, they had these designs up on the buildings, each with a different description. I assume this was some story that they were telling.

Monkey King of Mount Huaguo guarded Tang Monk, along the journey to the west.

Lao Zi came from the east with auspicious halo and makes it a much-told tale.

The heavenly maids scatter blossoms to spring the world

Then there was this big centerpiece as well.

Then this big guy with the two swords

The red section says "Yue Fei served the country with supreme loyalty. Yue Fei was a military general who lived in the Southern Song Dynasty. He is best known for leading Southern Song forces in the wars in the 12th century between Southern Song and the Jurchen-ruled Jin Dynasty in Northern China. He was put to death by the Southern Song goveernment in 1142. He is widely seen as a patriot and national folk hero in China.

The zigzag bridge was .. well .. a zoo! It was almost if all 23 million people in Shanghai were there trying to get across the bridge. They had large decorations at the entrances and then as you walked the length of the bridge, there were decorations in the water. Almost all of them had a little plaque with a description of the scene, which I will include as it was written (some of the English is not so great)!

This was interesting to see in China for me, it was the story of Adam and Eve. You can see the famous Huxinting teahouse in the background.

Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju once deeply moved his beloved lady, Zhuo Wenjun, by playing a song of confession of love for her.

In Chinese novel "Romance of Western Chamber", Cui Yingying and Zhang Sheng fell in love with each other and finally got married through thick and thin.

Separated by the Queen Mother, with great love, the cowered and the girl weaver still could meet each other across the Milky Way once every year.

Du Liniang met with her lover, Liu Mengmei in the dream, and die heartbroken, while thousands of miles away Liu sensed, found her back to life and get married finally.

The Zendai Himalayas Center, which is on the Pudong side of the river, also had a lantern festival, which we went to at night, so we got the view of them all lit-up. No commentary for these, I'll just let you enjoy the view of them like we were able to.