a chinese chinese new year

the two weeks i was in tianjin i efficiently divided my time between dining and sleeping. (i seem to have a gift for that.) there was at least one banquet to attend each day. and when i say banquet i really mean Banquet in which the number of attendants was never below fifteen. that's what you get when you have a considerable web of extended family. (and this is only of my mother's side.)

however, i was unable to capture any of the scrumptious entries on my camera for you to drool over. reasons there are three. first, i think it would be extremely rude and obnoxious to ask some twenty or so diners to hold off their chopsticks so that i can take pictures. second, also visiting home from a far away land is my cousin and her husband and daughters. the said husband is a cinematographer. whenever i picked up my camera in his presence i feel like a fraud. modest the way i am, naturally i refrained. third and most important, time and again it's proven that my artistic self never fails to shy away when my hungry self is awakened. all too often when finally there was nothing but fish bones left that i remembered the precious camera i had carried with me for three thousand miles. so i'm afraid you will have to take the 15-hour flight yourself to taste and see what you can never imagine in the foreign lands.

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below: he is painting with caramel. you can eat the picture once you get tired looking at it. serious.

although discouraged by the government for safety and environmental reasons, a chinese new year without fireworks and firecrackers is like a thanksgiving dinner without the turkey. the sizes of the dynamites have exponentiated during my twenty-two years of absence. it seems to have only encouraged people to burn them in bundles. it's not, i assure you, for the faint of heart.

 

tianjin, china. january 28 - febrary 6, 2011