Tomorrow (Friday April 4th) is Qing Ming or "Tomb Sweeping Day", and we get a day off for it!
To take some info from our Cultural Training:
Qing Ming literally means "Clear Brightness" and is a day to celebrate the rebirth of nature. It also marks the beginning of planting season and other outdoor activities.
Tomb Sweeping Day as celebrated today: The Chinese believed that the spirits of the dead looked after the family. Sacrifices of food, spirit, and money would keep them happy and the family would prosper through good harvests and more children.
However there is one major flaw with this in modern day China: currently married couples are limited to one child per family, unless of course they are blessed with twins or triplets.
Another interesting statistic is that women way out number the men in the population. I don't have an exact figure, but it's enough of a difference that it's even obvious to us non-"bean counter" types! Both of these little tidbits of information may help to explain the large numbers of Asian female children that are up for adoption each year.
But enough about that, I have a holiday tomorrow and I'm taking advantage of it. Some of my new friends have invited me to come along with them on a 5hr walk along the Great Wall! There are actually three different sections of "The Wall" that are fairly easy to access from our apartments, this one obviously being the largest and best preserved of those.
This will be my first visit to "The Wall", and man am I excited! I'll take the camera with me and try to get some good photos to post either Friday night or Saturday morning, Beijing time of course!
Tonight (Thursday) however I'll be on a phone conference to my home office. Being 12 hours away our night is their morning, and visa verse, but it always seems to be us here on this side of the world that have to do the night time thing. Man this work thing really gets in the way of fun sometimes, oh that's right I wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for the job!
OK I guess work wins out this time, but my day is coming soon enough!
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4 comments:
Sehr interessant! jaf
JAF - Xia xia!
Okay, okay, you're spoiling her enough already and start blogging again! ha ha!
LDC
Helloooo----Is anyone there in China??? Ummm someone sitting back here in the U.S. of A. just waiting to have a little entertainment from the other side of the earth...
(I'm having sister withdrawals. Can you tell? There's no one to complain to, well at least not anyone who will at least pretend to care...)
I'm anxious to hear all about your adventures together. (Well, not ALL about them, just the parts that I can share with my children. :) Love you guys! Have fun! Little Dark Cloud
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