Cultural Reception for Chinese New Year

 On Friday evening I accompanied my sister to a Cultural Evening to celebrate the Chinese New Year. It was in the Pudong East New Library, literally a brand new library to which they are still transferring books from elsewhere. Massive does not even begin to describe it! The events hall alone was about the size of half a rugby pitch, and the labyrinthine underground parking would flummox a minotaur. 

Xin, the Consulate driver, took us as it was an official 'do' and my gasps and goggle eyes at the size of it all entertained him a bit. He doesn't quite know what to make of me because I ask him to pronounce words in Mandarin so I can improve the pronunciation, also I am hopeless at waiting for him to open doors and lift bags for me.

Whilst my sister did the professional glad-handing and smiley smiley I ambled off into the cultural exhibition. There were about ten stalls demonstrating or exhibiting Chinese arts, crafts and skills, a huge buffet, and a small stage with traditional singing and dancing, plus quite a lot of very polite people of every nationality available. 

I was so busy being nosey and talking to anyone who had enough English to answer questions that I did not get many photos, but here are two gymnastic dragons incorporating four people. They danced and leapt all over the stage with such energy that I am surprised the dragon part of the costume held together!

I also had a lesson in tea drying, green, black, oolong... I think fresh oolong might be my new favourite. Not just a lesson but a lesson accompanied with tiny bowls of tea and a book of drawings to explain the drying and fermenting process. (All vastly different to the Kenya methods which are the only comparison I have.)

And then a brief but fascinating lecture from a lady on the traditional Incense stand. Did you know that some incense recipes and methodologies were written down 800 years ago (in the, I think, Ming Dynasty?) and modern scholars and practitioners are working on manufacturing them today? Nope! Me neither! I got to smell just about everything on the stall and discovered that traditional Chinese incense smells quite different to the Indian incense which is available at home, more botanical and bitter mostly, it seemed to me.

And then she opened a small jar and said it was one of the oldest recipes which they were working on. I may be gullible, but just imagine smelling an incense which is possibly similar to one which was burned 800 years ago? She was wonderful and the whole subject was fascinating.

Unfortunately, after watching part of the show, shaking hands with a lot of diplomats, horrifying the British First Secretary and Counsellor by comparing his wandering Consular General to my grandchildren and suggesting that he got one of those child wrist attachments for him, we had to depart. (Which is why I am a teacher not a diplomat...)

And so to Harbin!