Thursday, February 25, 2010

one side effect of Spring Festival

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22 is a bloody evil age since people around you, no matter how free and easy you used to think they were, started to ask about your relationship status. Sometimes parents or older relatives could be a little too helpful with it. They urged you to get involved in a marriage-oriented relationship. They kinda held the opinion that "you don't have to love him or her deeply because your passion could thrive in the long run (yea, right). You just gotta find someone good enough to have a family with". I just tried to be kind and firm but I guess I'd have a family-reunion phobia after one year or two if I stay single. Well, it's not gonna be any better even if I find my right one, because they would urge you to marry by then.

Chinese people generally tend to be family-oriented and very much appreciate our family bonds. But at every Spring Festival I got the feeling that I was brain-washed. It's no fair to blame mom or other relatives on giving me the brainwash but I have to admit that what they did and said affected my mind in some ways - I barely paid attention to the things in my routine life and I neglected school, my ambitions and even didn't bother being cynical. Instead, the definition and the concept of FAMILY became more graphic in my consciousness. Maybe that was what Spring Festival originally for.

The other day I invited my British friend over for dinner. It was not the first time for mom to meet my foreign friend, but she was still being very Chinese. When he said he hadn't really thought of marriage, mom started to enlighten him (in Chinese though). It seemed funny to me. Well, I believe foreigners like my friend would take marriage more sincerely and seriously than most Chinese people (although they get divorced more easily) because most Westerners must commit to the ones they love, but not the ones "well-matched in their social and economic status".

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Belated "Happy Year of Tiger"

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First and foremost, HAPPY LUNAR NEW YEAR!

Just when I decided to spend this Spring Festival in Shenzhen, I heard that it was snowy in hometown. It seems like I'd never get the chance to slip and fall down on the ice. Good thing the temperature dropped down right before the lunar new year and made it at least cold enough for a Spring Festival. It is never not festive in Shenzhe, even with those on and off popping of firecrackers. Several days before this bleak Spring Festival, I walked around the annual Flower Marker in Luohu as I did every year.




Shenzhen has no lack of flowers,so basically people go to the Flower Market just to join in the fun. It's more economical to actually buy flowers from the marker on Lunar New Year's Eve because it's the last day of the temporary market and everything there is on sale. It's said that it'd bring no luck if you purchase flowers after the Lunar New Year's Eve.













I spotted this new species of flowers. Don't you think it look like those birds in "Avatar"?^^


Besides flowers, there were some irrelevant stuff sold there,say goldfish, turtles and rabbits. Well, I can't expect to see tigers though.