John and Mei in Anshan

Today is known as small new year, which is a week before Big New Year or Spring Festival. Yesterday and today was spent doing a spring clean, perhaps that is where the words originated, it is a tradition thousands of years old. so I was cleaning windows and vacuuming and dusting etc. We also visited the graves of Mei’s father and mother, another tradition which included burning lots of paper money.

It is relatively warm today, around 4 or 5c which is a lot warmer then –23c so it is ...