new years of china

we didn’t get chinese new year off here at the international school, even though it’s a red letter day in indonesia. there are a LOT of indonesians of chinese descent, so the chinese new year is pretty huge here. there were lots of parades and dragons and good luck rituals and foods to ring in this, the year of the rabbit. i did catch some glimpses of the festivities (which went on for days). a dragon parade went through a mall i happened to be at in semarang two days ago. and i also found this in the mall -

“found” might be a bit of an exaggeration though, because really, who could miss it? it’s a 2 story tall rabbit! oh, and the banner he is holding says, “fortune rabbit”.

a lot of the elders of my church are chinese indonesian, so they thought it would be great if we all wore red to church yesterday. indonesians are really into dress codes for special events. red makes my skin look green, but i pulled out my one red shirt for the occasion. after church, we all ate traditional chinese party foods. i actually hadn’t tried these before. they were kind of.... surprising...

they came wrapped up in banana leaves, and the first one i opened looked and felt like a giant wad of snot. i am not even kidding. it was nasty.

i quickly opted not to eat with my fingers for fear i’d never get it OFF my fingers, so i grabbed a spoon instead. on my first go with the spoon, i effectively got it completely STUCK. but once i managed to nail the technique and get over the texture (mind over matter), it was quite tasty. really sweet.

when i opened my second banana leaf, i was pleasantly surprised to find something slightly less.... congealed. i ate this one with my fingers, and it had meat inside! what kind of meat? i don’t know, and sometimes it’s better not to ask. it tasted quite good.

the accompanying drink was the one part i wasn’t able to make it through. i drank about half before realizing that it had what appeared to be either chunks of beef or mushrooms floating in it. oddly enough, that wasn’t what deterred me. the problem was that it was really really overly sweet. too sweet for even me. two thumbs up for the snacks! one thumb down for the drink that could have used 1/10 as much sugar.