Beijing brought in the Year of the Dragon with a bang, quite literally. On the eve of the Lunar calendar New Year there were splendid fireworks all over the city. Every alley, every street had people out in the cold bursting crackers all the way in to midnight. This time of the year is when Beijing is most colorful, when the streets are colorful filled with red lanterns and lights.
We decorated our door with a red diamond-shaped sticker which has the Chinese character “Fu -福” meaning luck/prosperity which the Chinese usually hang upside down to represent “ Dao -到” meaning arrive – hence symbolizes “Prosperity has arrived!”
Over the holidays we attended the Temple Fair at Ditan Park and enjoyed a nice Chinese lunch at Jindingxuan, a four storey very popular 24 hour restaurant chain at Ditan.
(Read review here: http://www.virtualtourist.com/travel/Asia/China/Beijing_Shi/Beijing-1024960/Restaurants-Beijing-Jin_Ding_Xuan_Restaurant-BR-1.html)
Popular dishes during the Chinese New year are Noodles which represent longevity and Dumplings as they resemble the Chinese gold ingot. Also abundant at this time of the year are the Mandarin oranges which are really sweet and quite addictive.
Our favorite day of the Chinese New Year festival is the 15th day , which is celebrated as the Lantern Festival when everyone celebrates by eating “Tangyuan- sweet dumplings”.This day also marks the end of the celebrations.
It’s really cold in Beijing these days and we are all hoping for an early Spring.
My older posts on Chinese New Year -
http://sandra-jacob.blogspot.com/2011/02/chinese-new-year-fireworks.html
http://sandra-jacob.blogspot.com/2011/02/year-of-rabbit.html
http://sandra-jacob.blogspot.com/2010/02/year-of-tiger.html
P.S We've completed three long wonderful years in the Jing... We are officially the "Beijingers" now :-)
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