Here in China, it’s still New Year’s time. So my husband and I were home today. When we were in front of our door to take a walk, the woman upstairs (let me call her ‘Upstairs a-yi’) walked down to us and said ‘Here are dumplings for you. I’ve just cooked these. It’s Po-wu today, a day to eat dumplings!’ ‘Oh!’ She kindly shared her wonderful food with us again!
This is the fifth time we had dumplings for this Chinese New Year. So actually we were just talking about how we were getting bored of eating dumplings this morning… :P  But we always welcome the food she cooks, it’s very yummy always. They were two kinds, green chives and beef, and cabbage and beef.

We found there were a couple of dumplings in a shape we’ve never seen. They were flat and bigger than the others. Why?? My guess is this: when she was making dumplings, the skin dough was a bit more than the veggie and meat to put inside. So she used two skins for one portion of veggie and meat. I may ask her the reason next time I see her…

By the way, especially tonight I hear the noise of firecrackers and fireworks again…mm.

I researched about Po-wu (破五) a bit. It’s a day to eat dumplings now. But in old time, there used to be a tradition that people were banned from cooking, cleaning rooms, sawing, and for women going out from new year’s eve to this Po-wu (破五), for six days.  Ok…
And, omg, ‘Around 12pm midnight, people light firecrackers to invite a god for fortune’
Mm… it means we can’t have a good sleep tonight again :(

18th Feb was Chinese New Year’s Eve.
For dinner, my husband and I ate ketchup rice with omelet and some vegetables at home, then my husband had to work with his computer and paper. It doesn’t feel like New Year’s Eve at all.
Around 9 pm, the noise of fireworks and firecrackers got bigger, so we went outside to see how it looked.

BABABABABA!
DONDONDONDON!
People were lighting fireworks and firecrackers everywhere, so I jumped from being scared by the big sudden noise.
‘Kya——!!!’
‘E-panda, don’t run away suddenly! It’s dangerous! What if you get hit by a car?’
‘But… kowai yo—!!! (So scary!) ‘
It was like being in a war zone. I’ve never been in it though.
Some people spend a lot of money for fireworks and firecrackers for the New Year. This year the government banned lighting them in some areas because it’s getting extreme year by year and every year there are bad fire accidents and some people get injured (burned) seriously.
But they still do it.

I even saw people burning something in a street. Ok, there is a police man with fire extinguishers nearby…

18th Feb was Chinese New Year’s Eve. Because many people go back to their homes outside of Beijing, the streets were almost empty. Not many cars were on the road and factories were not running, so the air was very nice.
Following Chinese tradition, we went to a restaurant to eat dumplings.

We ordered dumplings with colored skin. All of them had a lot of vegetables inside. Yummy~.
They serve raw garlic with the dumplings. It looks wild to me…
The soup tastes like ramen pork soup.

These days I often see people walking around with red gift bags. Maybe they have tradition to give gifts to family for new year?