Chinese New Year

This year was the first year I had a proper Chinese New Year in China in many many many years, and Yinne very kindly invited me to Beijing to spend it with her extended family.

A lot of Chinese families spend New Year's Eve making dumplings, and given that I was in Beijing, obviously we had to do it. It is one of my favourite things to do with my mum and dad, so I was pleased to spend the evening wrapping away. Here were our creations - please note that the especially pretty pleated ones were mine :p

And the lovely family working hard :)

And given that it was New Year's, I was literally fed every minute of the day!!! This was the small (!) selection of snacks available when we were wasting away the evening playing mahjong - pistachios, peanuts, pumpkin seeds, strawberries, grapes, oranges, pear and apple, and I think some walnuts, sweets, and biscuits joined the party a few minutes later:

I was fed some very very nice buns for breakfast one of the days. I'll have to ask Yinne again what they're called, a kind of non juicy siulongbao:

My one big request whilst in Beijing was to have Beijing duck, mainly because all my blooming Mandarin textbooks always use it as an example of where people go for dinner with friends!!! I'd eaten it once before in Beijing about 6 years ago, and remember it being so greasy, but good! Again, Yinne's lovely family came up trumps and treated us to a lovely duck meal at their family's favourite duck place, 鴨王烤鴨, literally the King of Duck. I feel fat just remembering that meal!:

It was probably the best Chinese New Year's I've had in a long time. I especially loved the literally non stop fireworks right outside the house for about 5 hours before and after midnight on New Year's Day, and seeing people carrying huge boxes of fireworks with cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Only in China!