Hi everyone!
I'm still down in Guangzhou, but I am getting ready to take a train early tomorrow morning up to Shanghai, which is only five hours away on the bullet train. Going from Guangzhou to Shanghai is about the same distance as traveling from New York to Chicago. If you drove a car to Chicago right now, you would not arrive until 12 hours later! That's how much faster the bullet train is.
First, why is this called "New Year"? Didn't we already celebrate the New Year? Even though the whole world may have already changed over to 2019, many cultures in the world still separate their years by how many full moons happen in a given year. That means that the cycles of the moon do not always line up with 365 days, or 365 sunrises and sunsets. The calendar day that the Lunar New Year is celebrated changes every year! This year it will take place on February Fifth.
From Shanghai, I will travel to the suburbs outside Wuhu, which is a smaller city in Anhui province, not too far from Shanghai. My Chinese friend lives there and I will spend the Lunar New Year with his family. I look forward to sharing a lot with you about how that goes!
As we get ready for the holiday, however, I can already see a lot of things happening around me that are different than normal.
