Chinese New Year

Chinese New Year is coming and everyone is getting ready. Things are often chaotic here but it's been even worse this past week. Here are some pictures we've taken this week.

Chinese New Year is the equivalent of Christmas in the US. The Chinese people are kind of migratory and think nothing of leaving their families behind while they go to pursue work. It is customary during the New Year holiday to return one's home bearing gifts and money. The photo above was taken earlier this week. Every morning people line up to buy their train tickets home. The actual train station is way over in Puxi but they have these ticket offices all over town. I drive past this one on Zhangyang Road everyday on my way to work and there is seldom more than 5 people in line. This week, there have been hundreds every day.

This is our local Carrefour (you remember Carrefour - think "French-owned, Chinese Wal-Mart"). Not all of the Chnese are traveling. Some have family coming to visit them here in Shanghai so they are all stocking up.

You quickly get used to being a minority here. We really don't even think about it until you see another white face. We initially think, "Man, they really look out of place." Then we realize that that's how we look.

Checking out. They had 63 registers open and it still took about half an hour to check out.

In the US, we usually prefer that the feet be removed from our chickens. If you look closely thru the plastic, you can see the head is folded back over the chicken's back. Pluck 'em, gut 'em, sell 'em.

This picture's not very clear but I was trying to get a shot of the woman in the red sweater. While waiting to check out, she yanked her sweater up and started breast feeding her baby. Kid's gotta eat, right?

"Honey, Junior's coming to visit. We're probably gonna need more chicken, juice boxes, and toilet paper."

This picture has nothing to do with New Years. It's just a guy we happened to see over in Puxi Saturday. You see a lot of these hauling around styrofoam. Evidently they can get paid for recycling it. The Chinese do a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense but they don't waste anything.