Well today (11th) was our first wedding anniversary and I'm amazed and shocked how fast time has flown.
I will write more whenever I get around to uploading my photos!
I read something recently but can't for the life of me remember where I read it. Well anyway the reasons that oranges, mandarins, and kumquats are passed around and given around Chinese New Year time is because Mandarin Orange 柑 - the name of the fruit is phonetically similar to gold -- jin ju (金橘子) in Mandarin or kam (金) in Cantonese. Another explanation is that the Mandarin word for mandarin oranges is ju (橘), which sounds like ji (吉) (ji xiang 吉 祥) meaning good luck.
From
http://www.nwchineseculturalassociation.org/cny.htm
and here
http://purple2001tulips.blogspot.com/2008/02/chinese-new-year-is-coming.html
Anyway, for those that don't know my distant relatives live in the same building as us just a couple of floors below, and we also share the same ayi. Every night bar one since I got back from Taiwan I've been eating dinner in their house. And every night my great aunt says to me, "Take some mandarins...". I did this reluctantly just to be polite. As mentioned before I don't have a big interest in food so I just took them out of politeness.
I had nowhere to put them or hold them so she started putting them in my jacket pocket. It was quite funny to see my pockets stuffed with them but I must've forgotten about them because the next night when I went down there for dinner again and she said again, "Take some mandarins..." I grabbed a bunch (these mandarins are tiny - about the size of a ping pong ball, btw) and I was about to put them into my pocket when I realised my pockets were already full!
Not knowing what to do (and feeling a little foolish and embarrassed!) I quickly said, "Oh I still have lots at home I haven't eaten yet..." and quickly changed the topic. Well the 'at home' part wasn't exactly the truth, but the 'haven't eaten part' was true!
So of course as soon as I got home I quickly took them out of my pocket and put them in the fruit bowl on the dining table. Then, of course I had to try one. I am not sure how common these mandarins are in China but in Australia they don't really exist. They are tiny! So I went to the kitchen and started peeling it and popped the entire thing in my mouth. Oh. My. God. It was so sweet and delicious. It was so amazingly sweet and juicy (and I normally don't like citrus fruits at all...) It was heavenly. I quickly then ate another two. And more. And soon they were all gone. Yep, all of them.
The third night when I went down for dinner I didn't wait for her to ask me.. I asked her if I could take some (more)! Ha!
PS When I was younger and people asked if I spoke Mandarin I would be a smartarse and answer, "No, but I speak Orange" and they'd look and me funny and some people would wonder if Orange actually was a language! Oh dear... :)
I was going to blog about this earlier but forgot. Now I don't watch much tv, hardly any at all (the only shows I watch are "Amazing Race" and "Amazing Race Asia") but I am surprised to discover that Shanghai now has its very own English Channel called ICS. Woohoo! I gave up on free-to-air CCTV channels a long, long time ago after we got satellite tv but now there may be a reason to watch it again :)
It's 6 degrees - positively a heat wave! ;)
The snow is steadily melting and soon it will all be gone. I must admit I feel a tinge of sadness seeing it gone because it is such a special and rare occurence to me. When I first came back from Taiwan there was still quite a lot of it around but now it only exists on rooftops and even then not much is left. I can see a lot of 'wet patches' left on roofs where there used to be big slabs of snow.
Actually, there are still chunks, clumps and slabs about the place, basically in places that are constantly in shade and never get any sun. But most of those are dirty grey chunks, not that beautiful pristine white you associate with snow...
One good thing about Shanghai's weather is that it is almost always sunny. I know it rained heaps while I was in Taiwan (likewise it also rained heaps in Taipei - no doubt caused by the same high/low pressure system in the area) but generally speaking you don't get that horrible constant grey drizzly weather you get in some places (not mentioning any names Melbourne and Europe ;) ) I sometimes wonder if I suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) - that kind of weather really, really affects me and my dad said it affects him too. We used to live in Melbourne before Sydney and he told me he couldn't stand it, hated it in fact, which was one of the reasons we moved.
Weather and climatic changes are a funny yet scary thing... I keep having thoughts about that movie "The Day after Tomorrow" and something I read about the Three Gorges Damn (due for completion in 2009) being blamed for causing catastrophic weather patterns in Southern China recently. It's one of the few man-made structures visible from space (it is that big).
The thoughts that if that dam really did cause such huge changes in weather patterns.. well it's just mindboggling and damn scary.
Read more about the dam here and here.
I'm sure some of my readers may have been wondering why I never write about pubs and clubs. Well the short and simple answer is because I don't go to them! And the reason I don't go to them is because of the damn @#$@%@$ smokers. I would love to go to them but I don't. I didn't go to them in my hometown of Sydney either. Not until they banned smoking. OK I'd go rarely and never stay very long till it just got too awkward so I just stopped going altogether. I hate the stench and I hate the fact that I just can't breathe after a while and cough non-stop. It's not particularly easy to have a 'good time' when you can barely breathe...
As great as Japan and Europe are for places to travel to, the smoking problem leaves a lot to be desired (moreso in Europe). After being in Taiwan where it was like 'heaven' and coming back here to 'hell' I just want to scream! Apart from Taiwan the only other place I have been to recently which was non-smoking-heaven was Hawaii. There, you are not even allowed to smoke in public places OUTdoors! eg at bus stops, parks, beaches, etc. And because the people who live there are so nature loving and are at one with their environment they are all very happy to oblige. To me it was simply heaven and made me enjoy my time there even more (in fact made me want to move and live there!)
link
Tue Jan 22, 1:26 PM ET
BEIJING (AFP) - Beijing is about to extend a ban on smoking in public places ahead of the Olympic Games despite the Chinese capital's image as a paradise for smokers who have faced few restrictions on where they can light up.
According to a draft bill the majority of public places, such as restaurants, schools, hospitals, stations, libraries and museums will have to be non-smoking.
Hotels will also have to reserve at least 70 percent of their rooms for non-smokers.
Smokers who ignore the ban will face a fine of 50 yuan (6.9 dollars, 4.7 euros) while those who allow them on their premises will have to cough up between 1,000 and 5,000 yuan, according to the bill.
Beijing had already taken some tentative measures to establish non-smoking areas in 1996 without much success, but the approach of the August Games provided the impetus for the new decision, Chinese media said.
The places that will accommodate athletes and officials during the Beijing Games will all be non-smoking.
China has about 350 million smokers, or about a quarter of its population, and accounts for a third of the world's smokers, according to official statistics.
About a million people die of smoking-related diseases each year in China. Since October, Beijing taxi drivers have in theory been banned from smoking in their vehicles under penalty of a fine of between 100 and 200 yuan.
Customers desert smoke-free restaurant
Fri Jan 18, 2008 1:45pm EST
BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing's first smoke-free restaurant chain faces going out of business after its customers deserted it in droves after the ban was enforced, state media reported on Friday.
The Chinese are the world's most enthusiastic smokers, with a growing market of more than 350 million, making it a magnet for cigarette companies and a focus of international health concerns.
The occupancy rate at Meizhou Dongpo, a chain serving the spicy fare of southwest Sichuan province, had dropped to "about 80 percent of that enjoyed by other restaurants across the street" after it banned smoking in October, the China Daily quoted its manager as saying.
"We figure that if we're going to die, at least we're going to die honorably," the paper quoted Guo Xiaodong, deputy director of the restaurant chain, as saying.
Meizhou Dongpo had trained its waitresses how to discourage people from lighting up, but met resistance from customers who would lock staff out of private dining rooms to sneak a quick puff, Guo said.
"It just illustrates how much resistance there is to kicking the habit among Chinese smokers," the paper quoted Zhang Xuemei, a Beijing reporter who lobbied the restaurant to ban smoking, as saying.
Beijing, set to mark the 200-day countdown to the Olympics on Monday, has yet to issue clear rules on smoking bans, despite Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao promising a "smoke-free Olympics."
Along with spitting, and not queuing, Olympic organizers fear Chinese people's tendency to smoke anywhere at any time could taint the country's image in foreign eyes.
China banned smoking in taxis in October and launched a drive to ban smoking in hospitals, schools, and government offices last year.
But resistance to the campaign has been fierce.
Beijing authorities had written to 30,000 restaurants asking them to put smoking bans in place, but not a single one had taken up the suggestion, the paper said.
