Lunar Year Day 15

Day 15 - Feb24

Lantern Festival - in China this is called Yuan-Xiao after the soup which is eaten.
The story behind this festival -
Once upon a time in a land very far from here a beautiful heavenly bird flew down to a village and was killed by a villager. The God of Heaven was very displeased and decided to burn the village on day 15 of the first lunar month. However, a bright spark in the village persuaded all the villagers to make candle lanterns and to put them in all their windows. They also paraded in the street with lanterns and set off fireworks. The God of Heaven looked down and thought that the village was already burning and left it alone.

London's Chinatown February 2011

Lunar Year Day 14

Day 14 - Feb23

A busy day preparing for the Lantern Festival which concludes the Lunar New Year Festival.
You will need lanterns and dumplings to do this properly.
First the dumplings
Ingredients

4 1/2 cups (500 g) sticky rice flour (available widely in China!)
butter 7 oz (200 g)
black sesame powder 7 oz (200 g)
sugar 8 oz (250 g)
1 tsp wine (Chateau Mouton Rothschild)

Methods

1. Mix the butter with sesame powder, sugar and wine together. You need to heat a little bit. Make small balls about 0.3-0.4 oz (10 g) each. 2. Take 1/2 cup of sticky rice flour. Add water into the flour and make a flatten dough. Cook it in boiled water and take out until done. Let it cool down. Then put it in the rest of the sticky rice flour. Add water and knead until the dough is smooth. 3. Make the dough into small pieces about 0.3-0.4 oz (10 g) each. Make it like a ball using hands first and then make a hole in the ball like a snail. Put the sesame ball into it and close it up. 4. Cook them in boiled water. Make sure to keep stirring in one direction while cooking. When they float on the water, continue to boil for about one minute using less heat.

Now the Sky Lanterns

It is customary to launch lighted lanterns into the sky and if you want make your own try this link

However it is much easier to buy them or, better still, watch someone else's lanterns. The colour of the lantern is significant so here is the interpretation table:

• Red: Good fortune
• Pink: Romance
• Peach-red: Decisions and opportunities
• Orange: Money
• Yellow: Success in school and/or job
• White: Health
• Pale Green: Growth
• Pale Blue: Hoping something comes true
• Violet: Idealism

If you can't be bothered with all this then just get the electric ones out from under the stairs and give them a quick check over!

Lunar Year Day 13

Day 13 - Feb 22
Some celebrate the death of General Kuan Yu but you may wish to forego this in order to recover from day 12

Barden Mill is Closing

We are moored for the winter in Reedley Marina which is behind Barden Mill outlet centre.  Every thing in store is currently

20% off 

as they are merging with J12 outlet store.  Plans for the site are to demolish the mill building and build 19  houses.

Lunar Year Day 12

Day 12 - Feb  21

Diarrhea Day !!!
Perhaps a good time to contemplate some Chinese proverbs:

• Wife who put husband in doghouse soon find him in cathouse.
• War doesn't determine who is right, war determines who is left.
• A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
• He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.

Drinking Water

A recent radio programme reviewed UK government advice on various health issues and considered how effective it was.  In particular the programme researched:
-Fruit and vegetables -5-a-day   (smoothies don't count)
-Physical exercise -150 mins per week  (going to the gym once a week  doesn't work)
- Alcohol consumption -3-4 units/day for men and 2-3 units/day for women (no-one understands what a unit is.)
The conclusions seemed to be that the public are so confused by interpretation and ill-informed advice from other sources that the government has been wasting its time. The government has exacerbated the situation itself by changing its advice in an effort at clarification.
Things are no clearer in the area of drinking water. It seems de rigeur to carry a bottle of water everywhere nowadays. When questioning this I am informed that, according to the government, we must all drink 2.5 litres of water a day. This appears to have originated from  a wartime recommendation which did, in fact, make that point but continued to say that most of this we obtain from food. It is this slipshod attitude to accuracy  that leads to confusion with sometimes tragic results.  The current advice from the NHS is that we need 2.5 litres of water per day. Of this one litre is obtained from food and 0.3 litres from 'recovery'. So we need to drink 1.2 litres of water per se.
The Mayo Clinic in USA has different advice for Americans: men need 3litres and women 2.2 litres.  Apparently in the USA only 20% of this is obtained from food. Perhaps the American diet has a lower incidence of fresh fruit and veg from which to obtain fluid?
So how is this advice dangerous?  Apart from the impact on the wallet by buying bottled water when the tap stuff (in the UK at least) is equally good, I looked at the London Marathon for some indication of how people fared in a situation where water consumption might be considered critical.   Over the thirty years from 1981-2011 ten men and one woman died during the race. Causes of death were as follows: 
Heart problems - 7
Underlying health problems - 2
Drinking too much water - 1
Inappropriate drug use - 1
Too little water - 0

Lunar Year Day 11

Day 11 - Feb20

Rest Day - or Left-overs day  2

Lunar New Year Day 10

Day 10 - Feb 19

Eating Day - or Left-overs day  l

Dowley Gap Open Day

Yesterday we took advantage of the sunshine and went to see an aqueduct  with no water.

Photo: BW

Dowley Gap is on the Leeds & Liverpool Canal between Saltaire and Bingley. The aqueduct carries the canal over the River Aire: there is also a two-step staircase lock close by.  CaRT (previously BW) is carrying out some repairs to the  structures which necessitated draining the canal: in particular, they are replacing the two lower sets of gates and refurbishing the upper set.  We joined over a thousand other visitors to walk through the empty locks and aqueduct: in fact when we arrived round midday i was number 984 so the total visitors for the day could well have been over2000.  I was told that when they held an open day at the Bingley Five-Rise a year or two ago there were 7000 visitors on the Sunday.


After a stroll  along the aqueduct and back we went to investigate the staircase lock which had been drained in order to repair and replace lock gates

On the way we passed the temporary dam constructed to keep the aqueduct (and visitors) dry.

Walking along the bottom of a deep lock like this is quite an experience.

If you were wondering how the last drop of water was drained from the lock.......

Well.....they pulled the plug out

Lunar New Year Day 9

                       Day 9 - Feb 18
The Jade Emporer who rules all 33 heavans celebrates his birthday today and we must join in by preparing three bundles of long noodles, three cups of green tea, five differnt kinds of fruit (so that's whre five-a-day originated!) and six diffeernt dry vegetables. For his guardian, who is not vegetarian, we must prepare five animal sacrifices and some turtle cakes.
Remember not to offend the Jade Emporer by putting this food on his vegetarian table.