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Happy Year of the Ox (Cow)!

January 26th, 2009
posted by Ryan Rowe

Tonight is the beginning of the Chinese New Year, which began with today’s New Moon.

Here in Abu Dhabi, my only Chinese friend in this country invited me and about 20 other people to a Chinese New Year’s celebration at what she says is one of the few good and authentic Chinese restaurants in the city - the Beijing Restaurant.  Here is a map that Shu prepared for the benefit of anyone in the city who wants to try it out.  Her description of how to direct a taxi there is “Behind the Madinat Zayed shopping centre or Gold Souq, next to Shoe Mart.”

   

When I showed up the restaurant was packed and most of the diners were watching the television in the corner which was showing a live feed from the annual Chinese New Year celebration television show (a marathon four hours!).  Shu insisted that it is THE thing to be doing on Chinese New Year.  By the way, did you know that some 500 million people travel around the country at this time of year in order to return home to celebrate the occasion with their families? Yikes - think about the traffic jam!!!

Being the culturally aware person I am, I decided to wear red (a sign of good luck in Chinese culture).  When I proudly mentioned this to Shu, she promptly informed me I was meant to be wearing red underwear… I, of course, double-checked (I couldn’t remember :)).  Out of luck…. oh well, next time.

The food was delicious but unfortunately I didn’t have much of an appetite tonight given that I’m just coming off a brutal cold and am super fatigued.  But folks were raving about the frog legs and the pork.  What was the BORK by the way Shu?  My fave was the fried prawn (fried anything, really).  It was basically a family-style set-up with a range of dishes served on lazy susans (a circular flat glassware dish that spins around so everyone can access the food easily).  No alcohol served - a sure digression from the usual table-top fare found at a Chinese New Year party but sacrifices must be made when you live in the Emirates.

We made a very excited Chinese fellow even more excited and very happy when the entire table of 20 agreed to pose with him for a photo that he could send to his friends back home.  I insisted of course on getting a photo with him myself so I could show MY friends back home. :)

Photos on facebook so that I can tag those who attended :)  Here’s the link

and THANK YOU Shu for the lovely gift you gave us all with the candies and the fortune.  What a sweetie. :)

Ah - I need to plug her blog - you can visit Shu’s website here. :)

And in the words of my friend Kun - Gong xi fa cai, wan shi ru yi!

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Monday, January 26th, 2009 at 12:19 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Happy Year of the Ox (Cow)!”

  1. SBL Says:
    January 29th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    Hello,

    I am one of Shu’s blog reader and they linked us to you, loved reading the blog and here in Spain we were red underwear too for NYE, that is on the 31st Dec though.

    Sx

  2. Luis Says:
    March 12th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

    I remember in Montreal a Chinese food restaurant called Beijing in Chinatown that has very good food. Actually my favorite chinese ever. Cheers man and what a nice web page.

    Regards,
    Luis

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