Celebrating Chinese New Year in the United States

Like I said in the previous blog, family members are suppose to gather up during our new year festival. However, everything has changed here, in the United States.

If you win something, you must lose something, just like a coin always has two sides. Here I'm experiencing and learning something that would influence me in a positive way lifelong time, but on the other hand, the time I spend with my family and my friends back in China are reduced. This year is my fifth year studying in the United States. The lunar New Year is around February, it's during the middle of the semester here so I have not celebrated the Chinese New Year with my family for five years. To spend the New Year by myself seems no problem at first because I have spent 15 times with my family before, actually it was kind of special experience for me at 16. However, things started to change, and I think that is the common issue for those students who study abroad, we feel lonely sometimes, like extremely lonely...

Instead of spending time with family, here most of Chinese students would gather up and have dinner, or I would say a party together, just like families to each other. We would watch the Spring Festival gala online because there is no CCTV in the channel lists here, and this is what we usually do back in China, watching the show for over four hours.

Chinese Education

As I mentioned in the previous blog, students in China are studying in a strict and boring environment. Most of them are stressful because of huge amount of "competitors". If you want to go to a high-ranked collage in China, you have to beat millions and millions of other students from nationwide, in a annual Collage Entrance Examination in order to get in a desired collage.

For some reasons people can't completely blame the education system in China and promote foreign education system such as in the United States, to copy exactly the same educational structure because the circumstances are varied among countries. In China, there are over billion people of population and there are about 200 millions of students in the country, that is the number close to the whole population in the United States. So it would be against the reality if the American education system is transferred into China.

 Chinese students have to fight others in that annual Collage Entrance Examination, which we called "single-log bridge", not all of them, sometimes even just few of them could get a desired score and get into the collage they want to.

It is unfair because under this education system, students are taught to be test machines, most of them have lost their right to enjoy studying, lost their ability of being creative. But what else can I say, life is unfair. The only thing we can do now is to face the truth, but we won't forget how terrible these educations are, so that some day when some of us are in the position which he/she will be able to change the situation, and let our offsprings to have a better education.

Chinese New Year

Like the Christmas in the United States, Chinese New Year is the longest holiday in China and it lasts 30 days. Unlike many other new year, Chinese New Year is in accordance with the ancient Chinese calendar. So our new year begins some time during February and it varies every year.

There are many etiquettes along with Chinese New Year, in the place I grew up, we eat rice dumplings on the first day of new year because its shape of circle is the symbol of reunion, and family would live together happily in that year.

   

On the Chinese New Year Eve, which is the day before new year. During the night on that day, family members (not include relatives) would gather up and sit together eating dinner, after that, it would be the most exciting time when I was a kid, fireworks. 

On the first day of that year, we have to wear new clothes indicating everything would start from new. We would visit our relatives one by one and it won't stop until the seventh day of that year. During that week, we visit each other, seniors would give young people, especially kids a red envelope with some   "New Year Money", but in my memories, I did not receive them at all, they all go to my parents' pocket because I was too young (that was the typical excuse my parents would use).

New Holiday Emerged From the Internet

November 11 is a Veterans Day in the United States, it is a formal holiday. But on the other side of the world, November 11 is becoming a new holiday which it used to mean nothing.

As the growing of the internet, it has become one of the most important things in our life, just like air and water, contemporary people cannot live without it, especially the generation Y. People spread words online, exchange information with each other; as a result, more and more new ideas have been invented by the internet, by those "creative" internet people.

November 11 used to mean nothing in China, however, because of its four ones combination, "11.11", people start to add meaning on it, and ideas spread rapidly on the internet. Today the day has been defined as "Single Day", to celebrate those who are still single and to "despise" those couples. And companies are using the day to promote their items even though they have nothing to do with singles. Everything happens gradually, no one really knows the reason and the "holiday" is just invented somehow.

I know other asian countries such as Japan has defined the day as "Pocky Day" because "11.11" looks just like Pocky.

Distugsting Haze Happening in Shanghai

If you follow the Chinese news, you must notice that air, such a fundamental and necessary element in our daily life, has became a deadly weapon to half of the Chinese people, especially in Shanghai, the place where I live.

According to the department of weather, Shanghai has ranked No. 1 on the nationwide air pollution city list. Based on the atmosphere particulate matter (PM) scale, the air condition in Shanghai is counted as heavy dust, the most serious situation on the PM scale, and the number is over 600.

                                                                     1 DAY AGO

                                                                      ORIGINAL

I believe it is the result of rapid development of  industrialization. Shanghai is walking on a path which London city has been through during 18th century. We appreciate those advantages, those amazing skyscrapers that the government keeps building in the past few years to make our city modern, but could the country slow down its development pace just a little bit and care a little but more about citizens, about us, about our health?

Thanksgiving Break

For foreign students in the United States, Thanksgiving doesn't mean family gathering because most of our family members are living back in China. Instead, we spend our Thanksgiving with our friends.

For the last few Thanksgivings, my friends and I spent whole night on Black Friday shopping at outlets such as Woodbury near Boston. These were such horrible experiences to me because it was raining every time when we were shopping, and temperature was below zero, and it was such crowded. I bet more than half of the crowds were Chinese because you can see and hear people talking Chinese everywhere. Chinese people like to shop I guess, especially when those luxury brands are on sale, some of us are just addicted to brands...

I have to say it is phenomenon that is happening among Chinese today, some of them are just buying those brands no matter how it looks when they wear them. It is kind of shallow that some of Chinese are focusing too much on materials instead of spiritual nowadays. I hope the situation would improve someday in the future.

So for this Thanksgiving, we rent a big house in Maine near the the Sunday River Resort. It is a huge place for skiing and snowboarding. We had a really wonderful time there. We have nine people living in that house during Thanksgiving and in that time period, we were just like a family, we cook, we drink, we party, we chat and laugh.

Chinese Food 1: scrambled egg with tomato

One of the most important reasons I love China and proud of being a Chinese is because of Chinese food. And I think the thing that suffers me the most when I am studying abroad in this country is about eating. I'm not saying the American food is bad, it is good and healthy but as a person born and grow in China, I just cannot get used to the food here. And personally, I think most of Chinese restaurants located around New England area are kind of "fake", just like the feeling of an American goes to China and eats the burger there. 

Here I want to introduce a very "famous" dish called "scrambled egg with tomato". It is "famous" because I think that is the first dish that most Chinese people since they were a kid learnt how to cook it. It is easy cooking and the procedure is relatively easier compare to many other Chinese food. Below is the recipe (actually it is the way I cook it):

materials: 3 eggs (usually enough for two people to eat it), 2 tomatoes, a scallion, salt, vegetable oil

(the number of the picture does not match the step, and skip the picture 8)

Step 1:

wash and clean the tomatoes, cut them into small pieces

Step 2:

crack eggs into a bowl and beat it up, then put half spoon of salt in to it, and stir it evenly.

Step 3:

Place a wok on a cooker, heat it a little bit, then put some oil in it (about 5 spoons). Add in the eggs you just stirred and stir fry it for about a minutes until it forms yellowish, then cut it into chunks.

Step 4:

Don't turn off the heat, pick the egg out and put them into the bowl you used, then directly put those tomatoes into the wok, stir-fry them for about 2 minutes until you can see the tomato juice.

Step 5:

After you see the juice, put those eggs back into the wok and stir-fry both eggs and tomatoes for about 2 minutes, mix them together.

Step 6: 

After stir-frying, heat it for about 1 minutes and put some scallion into it. 

Finished! Pick it out of the wok and place in a dish! Ready for eat!