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Chapters 67-70 Music

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

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Chapters 65-66 Chinese New Year

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

Chapters 63-64 - Cave Homes

Chapter 63 Cave Homes In May of 2003, the teacher Zhang Liang took three of us foreigners to where he grew up in a cave. This was a short distance outside of Luoyang. His parents still lived there, but none of his four brothers and sisters lived there anymore.  The cave was just a very basic place. There was a bed, stove for cooking and some furniture. The ceiling was brick. They had a few chickens walking around the yard. There were also a couple of small buildings outside in their yard but I don’t know what was in them.  Besides the main cave that they lived in, there were also a couple of other small caves that must have been rooms for other things. They lived in a neighborhood where there were other people that also lived in caves.  Right now as I write this and think about it, I don’t know if I could live like that or not. I am so used to the every day basic things. I wonder if you have to grow up in a cave to live that way. To go from what we have for basic needs and go to live i