Chinese New Year!

The Year of the Dragon has begun here in China!  It has been an interesting week as expats to see what that means to the Chinese.  Red Lanterns and banners everywhere, dragon decorations, tangerine plants in pots with red envelopes hanging from the branches.  People give red envelopes with money in them to children and unmarried men and women as gifts.  The children at our school were led in a Chinese New Year program by the Chinese language teachers at school.  They sang and danced in Chinese for their parents.  It was very entertaining.  People are generally very happy and excited wherever you go.  Fireworks have been going off every night this week.  The most were of course set off at midnight of Chinese New Year itself, but the whole week has been festive.  We went to Hong Kong for a day this week and saw their decorations, too.  They had lit up dragons on shop walls.  We spied a dragon costume sitting idly, obviously having been used to perform at some point, as well as drums.  Unfortunately, we missed seeing any of the parades or performances.  Maybe next year!