Grant's Pad: Chengdu

Thursday, May 02, 2019

The Clan's China Adventure, Season 2, Episode 3: Spring Festival Season

Another year, another Spring Festival!

The Year of the Pig!

The Spring Festival is known world-wide as the largest human migration in the world, as people all over China leave their places of work (typically in the cities) and head out of town, either to visit their folks in their hometowns or to take a well deserved vacation. However, it's also quite the cultural experience as celebrations and festivals abound all over the country. Here in the Life of Grant, things were no different, even though we decided to lay relatively low and stay near our home base of Chengdu.

For me, Spring Festival season actually started with a series of company parties way back in January. In recent years, it's become a bit of a tradition at many offices in China to throw a party, not unlike Christmas/Winter Holiday parties in the U.S.

Since I work for/am affiliated with several companies in China today (basically the newly acquired/merged Collins Aerospace and its Avionics related joint ventures), I basically get to participate and/or host several parties. The first of these was in Shanghai, at our Shanghai office, where we did a bit o' costume play, donning garb representative of various dynasties through Chinese Imperial History:

As usual, I performed some Choy Lay Fut Kung Fu - this time an abbreviated version of the Buddha Palm Form

Collins Aerospace over the centuries :)

The second party I participated in was for RCCAC, or Rockwell Collins CETC Avionics Company, the joint venture that I manage here in Chengdu! Now, I've participated in and performed at quite a few Spring Festival parties in the past, but this was the first one that I hosted as the company's General Manager. And, if I say so myself, it was by far the grandest Spring Festival Party I've attended. It lasted an entire four hours, starting with performances from 5PM until 7:30 followed by the dinner banquet. The whole clan got in on the fun, too, as well as our very own resident "laowai", Chief Technical Officer Doug and his wife Peggy!

The party guests signing in

Kicking off the festivities for the evening

Our handsome and lovely hosts and hostess

Shake it off!

Lucky Draws

Pop dance!

Chinese Calligraphy Guessing Game

Can you guess what he's writing?

Year of the Pig Prizes

Kids' first kung fu performance!

My first weapon demo with my favorite weapon - the Red-Tassled Spear!

That's Fifi in the front cheering!

Beauty and the Beast on the Piano

Happy Year of the Pig!

After the parties, families typically go back to their hometowns to relax and also travel a bit for a week. Since it is our first year in Chengdu, we decided to explore a little around the Sichuan region.

Our first stop was Zigong, a small town to the south of Chengdu famous for its dinosaur museum, but also for its lantern festival! The dinosaur museum commemorates the many local dinosaur species discovered in the area. The lantern festival is an absolutely gigantic festival that can be thought of as a Christmas lighting festival on steroids! Some lanterns depicted traditional Chinese fables, while others were built up of ceramic dishes! Truly a sight to see!

A Treasure Ship lantern

A giant peacock!

Elephants!

Those are all ceramic dishes!

The story of the old man moving the mountain

Tiny liquid-filled bottles make up this giant lantern!

Ending the evening with a roller coaster ride!

We stayed close to home for the rest of the week as well, but went ahead to visit the nearby ancient town of Luodai, famous for its Hakka culture and it's faux-Great Wall, which, while small, was still a bear to climb!