Preparing for the New Year

"You must be so homesick! Aren't you going home to celebrate chunjie?" asked the Auntie that sells tofu on the back of a freight tricycle in the old city of Nanjing. Auntie rides down the narrow, winding alleys of Old Nanjing several times a day to emphatically announce the price of tofu at 500 grams for 1.5 yuan (that's about a pound for 25 cents). At my doorstep yesterday morning she told me to stock up because today was the last day of business and she'd be taking a weeklong break to celebrate chunjie, or the Spring Festival, also known as the Chinese New Year in the West.

The residents of Old Nanjing stock up as if they are preparing for a blizzard. Their pantries are stuffed with rice, potatoes, carrots, and other staples in preparation for the 15-day long chunjie from January 23rd to February 6th, when most businesses across the city will shut-down for at least a week. 

Tomorrow is New Year's Eve and everyone is in the holiday spirit. Here is my fully stocked refrigerator in preparation for Spring Festival, full of tofu, eggs, peanuts, almonds, bananas, almonds, broccoli, and bokchoy. I panicked in fear that I would starve to death. Note: This is worthy of a picture because I normally don't keep much in my kitchen--I just buy fresh whatever I need for that day at the market in the morning. Also I don't actually keep my refrigerator plugged in because it's cold enough in the kitchen: 

My neighbor, Big Brother Guo, warned me that I wouldn't be able to buy any food for a week, so he took me to the local market to buy the food featured in the above picture. I am so excited because he took me to a massive underground market near my house that I didn't even know existed. I'd walked past the entrance countless times in the past 4 months, but never knew that it was a market. I've been buying my groceries from the mobile vendors that ride down my street everyday, but I was thrilled to find this market because it has an incredible selection of vegetables and a huge variety. Plus a dumpling and meatball tent. Nice. Very Nice. I'm so excited to be shopping there for the next 6 months. After the New Year, of course. There were, as was to be expected, various somewhat frightening sights to be seen: 

Chinese word of the day: 

贵族- gui4 zu2- literally "expensive nationality," aka aristocrat