As the Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Valentine's Day, many businesses had to make a very important choice as which Holiday to honor this time. In Kunming, the choice has been very clear to everyone. A big dinner with family bombarded with fireworks is lot more traditional and patriotic than cheesy chocolate cakes with candles reads "5-2-0", which in Chinese sounds very similar to "I love you". Many guys might be saying, "Thank God, I would not have to spend Feb 14th with my girlfriend this year!" With the perfect excuse in hand, roses are even exempted this year, since all shops including flower shops are shut all day today. I literally had to steel some bread and cake out of a bakery late last night.Learned from some hard past experiences, we decided to stock the home fridge with fresh vegetables, fruits, milk, eggs and all other necessary alimentation, almost enough for an entire week. In reality, not all restaurants are closed during the holidays; the bigger ones actually choose to stay open, as Chinese have grown to celebrate New Year's in nice restaurants avoiding all the hassle of hosting huge group dinners at home. Even hotels are booked during this period for night entertainment such as poker games and MaJong challenges together with Karaokay on the side. Yet, to actually consume and enjoy these facilities during this time might just be a bit too much effort to my regular taste.
This New Year is the year of tiger, for those who were tigers, this new year is believed to be a year filled with difficulty and threats. In Chinese, we call it "Ben Ming Nian", to somehow tone down all these misfortunes and dangers in this coming year, we tigers are to wear red underwear from now on during the entire year until the last day of the year. My old aunts has started burning incense and praying for me in temples since few months ago. I have no idea if the red underwear would actually do anything, but somehow, disrespect this old tradition on the first day of the year seemed a little unwise, even for me.
As I walked into the first lingerie shop last night on our way back to the apartment looking the proper gears, I saw this interesting expression on my boyfriend's face as if to say, "cool! hmmmm....but did you want to surprise me for Valentine's Day or are you trying to get me to buy you something?" As I walked into the second one and then the third one, looking through only their red underwear section, the interesting expression on his face became even more interesting, silently but I can read what he wanted to say, " okay, red is nice, but I actually prefer black!" "Are you crazy, I am only buying a red underwear to save my life! You have no idea how dangerous it is going to be for me, this year of Tiger!"
