Chapter 67 Chinese Music I came to really like Chinese music. Here in the states we have many different kinds of music, they do also of course. I am not a fan of Beijing Opera. The first time I went to China with the LLFA delegation we went to see that. I do appreciate what they do and their talent and all of the work it takes to put a performance on but I just don’t like listening to it. I don’t like opera here in the US either so I am not prejudiced. During the first week that Justin and I were in Luoyang in 2002, we asked Jigang if he would take us to a store so we could get speakers to hook up to our computers. When we walked into a store, there was a song playing. It was a woman singing and I liked it right away. It was both her voice and the music that I liked. I asked Jigang if he would ask one of the people that worked in the store who the singer was. They told him and I bought a CD. The singer was Meng Tingwei. The song that she was singing when we walked in became one of my f
Chapter 65 Chinese New Year Fireworks The date of the Chinese New Year (CNY) changes each year, like Easter, it is not always on the same date. The first day on the New Year falls on the new moon between January 21 and February 20. They use the lunar calendar so it depends on when the first full moon of the lunar calendar is. During the Chinese New Year, I think it could be the biggest display of fireworks in the world. There would be firecrackers starting a week before the actual celebration. The closer it got, the more fireworks and the noisier it became. On New Year’s Eve day, the sidewalks and streets would almost clear out. It was wonderful for me, I could go for a walk and no one was around. I couldn’t believe it. I have pictures of the streets with no one there. To walk down a street in China and not see people or traffic is really amazing. There were times that I could see for three blocks and there were no people. Very little traffic on the streets, I could walk across from o