This photo was taken at yuyuan garden a few weeks back when I went shopping with two girls from the office. It was right after holiday, but still considered "spring festival" aka lunar new years. It starts off with lunar new years(like we have in the states) with the fireworks and firecrackers all day and then just stampedeing at night, and then a few days later there's another night of fireworks(spread out during the day and night), and then a few days after that is the festival of lanterns, which closes spring festival. The festival of lanterns is when "girls your age get to come out once a year" is what my boss said to me. Don't ask. People write wishes on alanterns and let them fly into the sky, which i didn't witness but wish I had.
Anyways, the new years decor was up for maybe 3-4 weeks- and since this year was year of the rat, there were giant rats EVERYWHERE. ok ok... like big cartoony strange ones. hanging off of buildings and such, like 30 ft tall characters plastered on the fronts of shopping malls. It was tacky and strange. Some of the rats heavily resembled mickey mouse. The lanterns were really nice tho- hanging in neat rows and glowing thru the night. I love multiples in an organized manner.
So Mary and Sandy took me on a shopping expedition and to see the lights. But they didn't say that. They said, we meet at 9am and go shopping. They didn't say we were going to shop for 8 hours, eat fast food, and then wait until it gets dark to see rat shaped lights and then force me to take photos with the rat shaped lights!
It was actually reallllly awesome! The rat shaped lights, I mean. They were constructed out of translucent tissue paper stuff in bright colors and lit from the inside. And they were all over yuyuan- on all the building facades, as well as giant rotating center pieces sculptures. The photo shows some of those lanterney sculptures on the water.
For new years itself, we spent the evening with Tucker's family, who'r from bellingham, washington. They are super nice, and their apt has a great view of the city. They hosted a shindig with other expats and it was funny because everyone seemed to be wearing red- and it was just ironic to me to be spending chinese new years with white folks. But it was awesome all the same, ad we each got chinese proverbs. I lost mine. So I took the liberty to looks some up:
"Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still."
"Add legs to the snake after you have finished drawing it."
"One cannot refuse to eat just because there is a chance of being choked."
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