Happy New Year

January 26 marked Chujie which is the first day of the lunar new year. Chujie or "Sping Festival" is a three-day celebration. It is celebrated with visiting family and friends and lots of fireworks. We had some friends over to celebrate. We had a finger foods that included: homemade mac and cheese, tuna salad sandwiches, peanut butter and jelly sanwiches, apple slices, mandrine oranges, banana pudding, pringles (and pringle type chips), and ramen noodle cabbage salad

We took alot of video of the fireworks that were detonated around our neighborhood.

This is a video of Gentry writing her name with a sparkler. The sparkler that we used here are nothing like the gunpowder on a 8 inch piece of burning hot steel that was given to me by my saftey conscious parents when I was a child. They are about 36 inch pieces of wood with at least 16 inches of handle.


These videos were taken around 8:30 p.m. There was a break in the fireworks from 9:00 p.m. until about 11:30 p.m. It picked up from 11:30 p.m. until well after midnight.

~ Brad

Appeasing the kitchen gods

A week before the Chinese New Year some Chinese participate in the "Appeasing of the Kitchen god." According to Grace Young, the author of The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen,
the tradition is to make offerings to the kitchen god as a sort of bribe.
"The kitchen god is a domestic god that resides behind the stove and he watches over everything in your home," Young tells NPR's Melissa Block. "And the Chinese believe that the heart of the family resides in the kitchen. … The family always puts a food offering in front of this little altar that they have right by the stove." The idea is that when the kitchen god goes up to see the jade emperor, his report will be favorable and you'll have a prosperous new year, Young says.

A friend here told us that they also shoot off fireworks as an appeasement to the kitchen gods. This video is of fireworks a few blocks from our apartment building. Marilyn, Gentry and I were watching them being shot off in several different directions. We could not get a clear view of them so we bundled up and started walking around.

The funny thing is that when we were out of sight of our courtyard, someone shot off some big ones there. We headed back in time to see some more neighbors getting ready to shoot some themselves. You can buy some serious fireworks here. As you can see in the video below, the fireworks are Fourth of July finale quality. I took the video from mine and Mare's bedroom window.

~ Brad

Next Top Designer

The last video shows a few of the clothing vendors. We saw the most beautiful dresses. I was told that you can bring a photo of a dress or suit to one of the vendors. Once you've selected a fabric, they will measure you and tailor the outfit. If you are a fan of "Next Top Designer", this would be a dream excursion for you.

posted by Marilyn

Last Friday Jennye and I made a trip to the fabric market to have bedding made. The fabric market is a huge room with thousands of bolts of fabric. You can find cotton, wool, silk & upholstery fabric. After selecting patterns for the three bedrooms, we found a vendor willing to coordinate the tailoring.

Aubrey went with Jennye and me to pick up the bedding on Saturday. The first video is the street we most frequently catch the bus. The second and third videos are food vendors at San Zhan market. The candied fruit was really good. I'll try the bing another day. Once the bing has been cooked, you select the meat or vegetables you'd like inside. It reminds me a little of a chalupa when I saw people eating them.

We will post photos of our apartment in a day or two. It has been challenging to find everything we need and/or want to set up our home. We weren't able to walk into one store and purchase everything at once. Day by day, we find a store to purchase a few items at a time. I did find one store where I found some vases and home accessories that have made our apartment feel a little more like home. We need art on the walls! Maybe we'll purchase some paint and try to create our own masterpieces. If there was a Target here, I think I could have had the nesting process knocked out in a couple of days. There is no jumping in a car and running down the road. Any trip requires a bus, taxi, or long walk to a market. Throw in the language barrier and even a simple trip feels exhausting. This has been a great frustration to me and motivates me to learn Chinese as quickly as possible. If it weren't for the generosity of our new friends acting as translators, we'd be unable to function.

I can't say enough about the kindness of the people we've met. Most people are gracious to try and understand my poor attempts at Chinese. Lots can be communicated with smiles and gestures. The rest, I'm afraid, will have to wait until I've memorized more words and practiced my four tones.

posted by Marilyn

Jam, File Gumbo & Brad's Underwear

I almost forgot to tell you about jam, file gumbo and my underwear. On Wednesday, the morning after we arrived, Laurel and I are sitting in the living room surrounded by 13 suitcases, a cardboard box, and various other items. I notice a puddle beginning to form under one of the blue suitcases. It was a rather thick puddle. I mentioned this to Laurel. We opened the suitcase to discover that one of the 4 jars of homemade jam that we had attempted to bring with us had broken. There was muscadine jam covering 2 of my shirts and a pair of Marilyn's pants. Luckily, the other three jars were in tact and the rest of the items in the suitcase were protected by the vacuum packed plastic bag in which they had been stored. It was quite the mess.
As far as the File Gumbo, it wasn't actually the Gumbo with sausage, shrimp etc, it was the seasoning. When it was packed it was double zip-lock bagged. When it arrived it had been inspected and was now loose in the suitcase minus the lid. The seasoning which originally had been stored in the bottle was now being stored in about 9 pair of my underwear including my thermal pair. I figured that we could do without the seasoning but I needed the underwear so I decided not to store the seasoning in my underwear but to wash them. That was a mess considering the underwear was not designed to store that sort of item.

Buying a Slab of Pork

So I, Brad, was shopping for dinner. There is a meat market near the apartment. I noticed several people inside buying meat. So I went in and began to look at the various cuts of meat. I could not identify any of the meat except the chicken feet, which looked rather meaty. Me not being able to identify meat is not something new considering that I only read the labels when in the states. All the other customers were buying slabs of what I determined to be pork, since there was a picture of a hog above the case. So I bought a slab, Woooo Hoooo. My first meat purchase besides the cans of tuna that we bought at Wal Mart.

I brought the meat home and showed it to Mare she laughed so hard. She then determined that I had the makings of bacon and tenderloin. We fried part one night in flour, salt and pepper with steamed rice for dinner. I fried the rest to have with scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast the next day. The tenderloin was baked and eaten with boiled potatoes & carrots (covered with Cavender's...yum yum), stir fried broccoli, cabbage & onions.

The video is of me cutting the pork into strips for the first nights dinner.

Another One Rides The Bus

We went downtown to buy a vacuum cleaner. So we took our first bus ride....appropriately enough it was the #1 bus. It was a 15 minute bus ride.

Landing in China

We have just arrived.....a week ago.

We have just arrived.....a week ago. I must apologize for the delay in posting to the blog. There is no excuse why I should not have blogged before we left except that we were preoccupied with packing, weighing (me and the luggage), unpacking, repacking, visiting with family, weighing (again me and the luggage), etc. But now we are here and the time has come to blog and blog hard.

On the way back to the apartment last night after eating dinner (a very nice pork tenderloin, mashed potatoes, and fresh rolls) with friends, we decided that everyone (even G) would have a blog entry today. I am first because I am up first. I was awake at 0630. I have seen each sunrise here since we have arrived, which is strange because I can't remember the last sunrise I saw in Arkansas. I think that that my time schedule has not had to change much since the 1530 - 0100 shift ("Talking about Shift Work" - Kenny Chesney & George Straight) at Fed Ex Freight is pretty much the China day.... 0530 - 1500.... anyway. Not much change.

Departing Tulsa on Monday morning was not to bad. We said good bye to my parents and some very dear friends that are as close as family. We love them all very much. The 13 bags and one box were checked and the 5 carry-on's, 4 personal items and 1 electric guitar (named "Ivy") were in tow. Off we went.

As we were landing in Newark, I was looking for the Fed EX Freight terminal which is located very near the airport. I have a video that I took of our landing in which I was able to get a few seconds of the terminal. If I can figure out how to edit the video down to just that part I will post it.

The second of the three legs of are journey was the long one.... it was not too bad. Gentry made it the best. She had food to eat and a video screen in front of her with more movies than she could ever watch. I think that I started 4 movies and did not finish any because I kept going to sleep. I almost made it through "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid". I forget how much I enjoy that movie. Robert Redford (and Paul Newman also) are just cool. The food was good. Have you ever noticed on the plane when they bring you the food that you have just enough room for all your food and drink but no room for the paper, plastic and foil that comes with the food? I had to eat some things really quick with holding foil in order to have a container in which to place my trash.

We made it through customs and immigration without as much as a hiccup. We were met by some friends. We travelled from one terminal to the new terminal that was built for the Olympics. We were quite the site with all of our bags, box, and guitar in tow. From there it was on to our new home city.

We were greeted at our new apartment by friends and hot Pizza Hut pizza. That's right Pizza Hut pizza. Friends had already made the beds and bought cereal, milk, juice and fruit for us. That is the trip over.

There is much more to tell but I will save that for the next blog. I think that my next blog will be Jam, File Gumbo, and Brad's Underwear.