Spring Festival is nearly here

Today is the last day of school for the kids before Chinese New Year. they are dressing up in CNY themed clothes and there is a cake sale to raise money for those affected by the Australian bushfires. I’m helping out with Ezra; can’t see that being anything other than total stress as he tries to eat all the cakes, touches everything and then runs off.

The kids and Emma are off school until early February. The whole city seems to be shutting down. Chain cafes and online deliveries all shutting up shop for the holidays. That said the public holiday aspect is a bit complicated. The calendar for public holidays was published in November (late right?). And a fair number of the days “off” have “adjustment days” attached. So for the days you don’t work you have other weekend days you need to work to make up for it. So for example: May 1-5 (Fri-Tues) is the May Holiday. But then the adjustment days are April 26 and May 9 (Sun&Sat). That’s not my idea of a pubic holiday 🤷🏼‍♂️

Obviously we expected things to be a bit different here but you never quite know what things will be different.

Ezzie and I have been going to a little play group attached to the school. There are lots of international parents and plenty of local Chinese too. One of the things that strikes you as different is that with the local Chinese there are generally more adults in attendance than kids. Often mum, Nan and grandad will bring one child. With the grandparents filming the child and parent go about their business. I’ve noticed the same thing out shopping or in restaurants too. 3 or 4 adults to one child is very common. Maybe that’s why we get so much attention lol.

Also I hadn’t expected the Chinese to be so superstitious. Lucky numbers and Feng Shui (perhaps not quite superstition) are part of every day life. When Emma moved offices a detailed consideration of the Feng Shui was as important as the IT configuration. When we got our new mobile SIM we were given a huge long list of phone numbers to pick from and advised to avoid lots of the options as they were unlucky numbers. And I can only assume that lucky and unlucky numbers explains the floor options in this apartment block…?!

Anyway. Plans for the next 10 days include both Skiing and Seoul. We’re planning on heading to one of the ski resorts that’s easily accessible from Beijing (about an hours drive). I was a bit surprised it was so close but given that the snow that fell two weeks ago is still on the ground in places and also that Beijing is hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics perhaps it was obvious. Only Emma has been skiing before so it’s more just to try it out than anything serious but should be fun.

Then we head to South Korea. As Emma and the kids are off we thought that rather than just hang about Beijing we’d hang about in Seoul. It also has the worlds largest indoor theme park which in this temp is key!! I’m mainly excited about the Korean food which is one my absolute favs.