Happy Spring Festival! a.k.a Happy Chinese New Year! a.k.a. Xin Nian Kuai Le!

In a strange reversal of roles, Jenny is watching television while I play on the computer on this second New Year's Eve I have experienced in the last fifty days.  It is the tradition to watch the big gala television show on CCTV1 on New Year's Eve.

 

Tony, strangely, is asleep early.  My wife, in preparation, for the evening, gave him an early bath.  That combined with an early bottle and the little bugger is asleep.   A nice respite.

 

There has been a rash of fireworks, but in my part of Wuxi -- it has been relatively quiet.

 

I also have been trying to get news about the Winter Olympics in Vancouver.  With 1.3 billion people in China thinking about some other event, I suspect that the opening ceremonies were not well-watched here.  (Funny, how a region with a large Chinese population would decide to have its opening ceremonies so close to Chinese New Year.)

 

Now I am cynical of the whole Olympic movement -- it is nothing but a corporatist exercise for government types.  So, I am predisposed to see the games fail.  But the death of the Luger was not the way I want to see the Olympics discredited. 

 

I am not surprised by the reports of the weather in the Vancouver area not being wintry enough.  I lived in the Vancouver area for ten years before I moved to China.  For me, to live near Vancouver was an escape from winter.  Real winters happen in Winnipeg and Brandon, Manitoba -- places I used to live and  where the Winter Olympics could never be held.

 

Anyway, Jenny, Tony, and I wish you all a:

 

Happy Chinese New Year!