Nanyang is a “smaller” city in the rural heart of China in the province of Henan.
It was time to celebrate chinese new year with Kai’s family, who live in a rural farming village outside of Nanyang.
When we arrived at the train station, it was already dark, and there were nonstop fireworks going off absolutely everywhere. And I mean everywhere. It was a warzone.
After getting to the house, we set off a ton of fireworks of our own.
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I was going to learn quite a few new traditions from this part of the world.
One of the more interesting ones that you can’t ignore is how they bury their relatives.
They make large mounds in the middle of the farm fields. There are mounds everywhere you look.
Mounds
The size of the mound has something to do with the status of a person. Kings from this area would basically have small mountains erected for their burials.
Also, the smoke in this photo is from the fireworks.
In the morning we visited Kai’s grampa’s grave mound, where we set off fireworks and burned money as an offering to him.
Later we went into a small neighboring city called Shitu, to visit an ancient temple there.
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We then went into Nanyang to get dinner and visit a shrine for a well respected ancient doctor from this city.
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The next day was spent dropping off gifts to various family members. The gifts were useful things like huge boxes of eggs and milk.
We then spent most of the day at Kai’s aunts house with some of their family.
It was really nice, and she was an amazing cook.
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Farm Cat
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The final day was spent driving around giving more family members gifts.
Lunch was funny, because Kai’s dad was trying to just drop off a gift to his brother and then leave, but his wife blocked us from leaving and made us go to lunch with her.
The lunch was at a terrible restaurant with basically inedible food. She was a pushy woman.
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Family Dog
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After having a nice visit, our next move was a high speed train to Beijing.