Lunar New Year in Viet Nam

Saigon, January 30th

It's the middle of the day.  I've had two lattes while reading a John Steinbeck novel and I'm still not certain how I'll spend the day.  I give myself permission not to care.

It's festive here in Saigon this week.  Red lanterns abound and beautiful yellow mums and kumquats adorn every shop and mini-hotel.  Little red envelopes attached to blooming trees bear best wishes for the Year of the Horse.  Some shops and restaurants are beginning to close, allowing workers to rush home to their ancestral villages to rejoin family for this special celebration.  Still, the city bustles with activity and lights, so many lights.  It's the lunar new year celebration, the most important festival of the year for Vietnamese, Chinese and many other Asians.

Across the alley from my third floor hotel room sits a Vietnamese man on a his balcony before an altar festooned with images and icons and offerings.  He places sheets of inscribed paper and items of clothing in a burning barrel, probably cleansing his life of the present and past, preparing for a successful 2014.   Maybe this is good wisdom for those of us too attached to the past and the present, too attached to what we have and must have.

May this be a Happy New Year for all beings.

Winter 2014 in Shandong

Sitting in my sixth floor room, overlooking the south gate of our campus, I marvel at two small golden gingko leaves I keep in a plastic bag taped to the wall over my desk.  These are reminders of places visited in China.  One was collected from a pathway in Kunming near the university. Another came from our campus at Yilong in rural Sichuan, I remember, from a tree under which little children laughed and joyfully played in the fallen leaves one autumn morning in 2012. Once brilliant green on branches of stately trees, the precious golden leaves hold generations of history in their now dried veins.

That was autumn a year ago.  Here we are in winter, the year 2014, and in Shandong Province.  My first semester has finished at the university.  The students have moved on to homes afar for their reunions with family and celebrations of the lunar New Year festival.  

I've stayed back for a week post-finals, so I can walk the beach along icy waters nearly alone.

Soon I, too, will leave for some travel and visits with friends in Viet Nam and then in America.......but not before posting gingkos to my blog and rejoicing in another great year on the road!