On February 7, 2008, the Chinese New Year will be celebrated. It will be the year 4705 according to the Chinese calendar.

The Chinese calender is called a lunar calender. This means that the Chinese calendar relies on the phases of the moon to count the months, instead of assigning a certain number of days and nights to each month as our solar calender does. One problem this calendar has, from the Western point of view, is that it does not follow the seasons accurately; as the years go on, the day on which the New Year is celebrated would slowly get later and later in the year, eventually beginning in summer or even fall! To keep it constant, on some years an additional lunar month is added for the same reasons we add a leap day, so that the Chinese New Year is always in winter.

There is a larger cycle within which the Chinese calendar operates; each year is assigned a property (wood, fire, earth, metal/gold, water) and an animal (rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep/goat, monkey, dog, rooster, pig/boar). February 7, 2008 will be the beginning of the Earth Rat year. This year was the year of the Fire Pig. I was born in the year of the Wood Dragon (1988). It actually somewhat helps to know this if you're traveling China; many people, instead of asking your age directly, will instead ask what sign you were born under. Stating your age directly can get you some odd looks (fortunately, the Chinese also use our calendar, so it's not too confusing to state your age that way).

The order behind the animals has a story; one day, as the Chinese calendar was being created, there was a race to see which animal would get which year in the cycle. The story says that Rat tricked Cat by telling him the wrong time for the race, and then both Tiger and Rat hopped onto Ox as it ran. As the Ox was crossing the river right before the finish line, Rat pushed Tiger into the water, hopped off Ox and ran across himself. This is why he is the first year in the cycle, and Ox the second. Tiger quickly swam to shore and claimed the third year. Cat quickly figured out what had happened and ran to catch up; however, he was too late to claim a spot, as twelve animals had already finished the race. Cat always held a grudge against Rat for the trick. This is the reason cats always chase rats nowadays, according to the Chinese.

Rabbit was next; instead of swimming across the river, he jumped across on floating logs and rocks. After him came Dragon, Snake and Horse. Goat, Monkey and Rooster came in together on a boat, having worked together to get across the river on a raft. Dog came in eleventh, and the Boar came in last.

Next time, I'll talk about what actually goes on during the Chinese New Year Festival!

Some words:

nian (pronounced nyen) 年 - year

you (pronounced yo) 有 - have

mei (pronounced may) 没 - not; (negation)

lingqian (pronounced lee-ng chi-en) 零钱 - (money) change

ni you meiyou lingqian? (nee yo may yo lee-ng chi-en) 你有没有零钱？ - "Do you have any change?"

Zaijian!

-Tom

Hello!

Sorry for the lack of posting, I've had some very large computer problems over the last week or so. That's over now, though, so now that I've got the chance...

There's actually a lot to do in China in your free time, if you're so inclined. Shopping is big here - there's tons of stores with clothes, food, books, electronics, and almost everything you might want. If you're looking for video games or reliable computer software, however, that is something this place does not have in abundance. Malls and small stores are everywhere, and you can bargain for larger purchases fairly easily, if you can speak just a little Chinese; enough to say prices. There are very few places that you cannot bargain; supermarkets are one such place. This being said, the supermarkets are also usually cheaper than you can bargain a lot of places down to, if not by much. They are also harder to get to; it's a thirty-five minute walk to the nearest one from my dorm room, which, compared to the little places around the dorm room, almost make it not worth going to sometimes.

You can almost always find a basketball game to jump into within about three blocks of where you are. There are two kinds of parks - one that pretty much only has basic workout/stretching equipment (treadmills made of rollers are actually fairly cool to watch), and places for basketball/other sports. The second type is rarer, and usually within the confines of a set of buildings. The basketball courts are constantly in use, even after it gets dark out. Soccer is the other big sport here, but it's much harder to jump into a game here - usually the field is being used by the official school team.

Then there is the ever-present TV. Dramas and news are on almost constantly, and there's English, Korean and Japanese channels here as well. In addition, there are tons of movies for very cheap. They're sold everywhere and cost very little.

And then there's just the sights around town; huge buildings, construction for the Olympics, the local schools, from elementary school to graduate schools, locals flying kites, practising any of the myriad of martial arts they've learned or doing an impromptu showing of Beijing Opera. If you're at all motivated, it's really hard to get bored here, except perhaps late at night where there's not much of this going on.

Some new words!

电视剧: Dianshiju (pronounced Dee-en shee ju). Dianshi is "television, and "ju" is drama.

块钱：kuai qian (pronounced kwai chee-en). The effective shorthand for RMB. It's used differently, however; a bit hard to explain in this regard.

篮球：lanqiu (pronounced lahn cheeou). Basketball.

商店：shangdian (pronounced shahng dee-en). General store.

Zaijian!

-Tom