Xin nian kuai le!
We are in the middle of the Chinese New Year celebration, this being the eve of the lunar new year. At midnight tonight, the year of the ox will replace the year of the mouse.
The city of Nanjing has emptied- all of the storefronts are closed, and will stay that way for at least three days, most likely six. Probably 3 million of the city’s residents have set out for their hometowns, leaving behind a metropolis eerily bereft of normal hustle and bustle. We feel like we have the town to ourselves!
The fireworks started today about lunchtime. Strings of firecrackers hiss down at street side all up and down the boulevards, and the exploding rockets burst right out our seventh-floor apartment windows. It sounds literally like a war zone. We don’t expect to get much sleep tonight, but what a sight!
With all the rest of the Chinese, we wish you a happy lunar new year!
JM and Liz in China 
Happy Chinese New Year to the three of you and all of China! May the Chinese people have a good year of many more friendships across the international lines, and across the cultural borders of many other peoples, enriching one another with the fruits of good values, good ,honest conversations, and good days together. May the future be bright for all the Chinese people, young and old. I hope many more of the people of China will come to visit our country and get to know us as just ordinary people with families like themselves, wanting the best for our children and a safe, peaceful world for all the children in the world to live in with happinessand peace.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!