Happy Year of the Tiger!

As is traditional, we spent the Spring Festival with Carol’s paternal grandparents, making dumplings (of which I’m proud to say I managed to eat one and a half) and playing Chinese checkers.

In the evening the whole family sat down to watch the Spring Festival Gala, a highly elaborate affair with acts representing the 56 different nationalities that make up modern China, as well as a performance from ‘Mr Magic’ and a little girl who had somehow managed to memorise all 504 Chinese surnames.

We watched a number of sketches as well, covering social topics as diverse as the lack of jobs for graduates and the increasing frequency of false advertising.

Thankfully the family had the television on CCTV 9 which has English subtitles as, even though Carol's English is great, I’d struggle even in English to articulate exactly what some of the sketches were about.

When midnight came, the sky was filled with fireworks, and Carol’s cousin and grandfather were highly amused by my look of horror as they gleefully threw lit rockets out of fourth-floor window; safe to say the phrase ‘health and safety gone mad’ would never apply over here.

Indeed, the sound of fireworks exploding has become very familiar, and they are set off at all hours of the day and night.

Even as I type, a group of children are setting off firecrackers outside.

Still, I guess it makes a change from techno music played on loop which normally fills the airwaves.

The Chens have been feeding me very well, and every day we seem to devour half a cow (intestines included).

Purely coincidentally, we ate the Chinese equivalent of pancakes on Tuesday, and I tried to explain to Carol about Shrove Tuesday, although sadly most of this was lost in translation.

I guess celebrating a festival at the end of which a man rises from the dead would probably sound a little far-fetched to me if I first heard the story at 17.

We even ate Cadbury’s chocolate yesterday, a gift from Carol’s cousin in Australia, and I’ve decided that gorging on the biggest bar of Dairy Milk that I can find is definitely a top priority when I arrive home!

Aside from all the eating, I’ve spent the rest of the week ‘hanging out’ with Carol and her mother in Dongfanghong Square, where some clever entrepreneur has set up a cordoned off section in which you can actually pay for the pleasure of feeding the pigeons and having them land on you - a far cry from the flying vermin approach to the birds that many Britons take.

We also had the opportunity to Skype my grandparents in Whitefield which the Chens enjoyed a lot, and have watched almost an entire season of Prison Break in two days.

Embarrassing as it is to admit, the worse the acting gets, the stronger my addiction grows.

We’ve also been told that we’re to move into our own apartment tomorrow, which should allow us to finally get settled and focus on the project we came out here to do.

Anyway, I’m off to meet Callum, a Project Trust volunteer based a couple of hours away, in about ten minutes so need to get a move on.

I will write again next week when (hopefully) I’ll have photos of our new home to show off.