Sorry I know these pics are a long time coming – doesn’t help that I don’t have a digital camera and can’t find a place to develop my film! so these are some shots of Chinese NY taken by Anne Halvorson, permanent AD here in Shanghai but placed from Portland. The other girl in the pictures is Christin, also over from Portland. There are loads of westerners here this week because all Chinese have the week off.

A quick rundown;

the red ribbon is a wish (everything will go your way) that you throw over the wish tree and hope that it gets caught in the branches – not as easy as it sounds! the tree itself is lovely and painted gold. we did that New Years day and it was complete madness down there. I can’t tell you how nice it’s been to be here over New Years. I’ve learnt a lot about appeasing money Gods and am in awe of the fireworks. And do you know as soon as they’ve let off crates of explosives that leave red debris everywhere they all go grab their brooms and sweep up after themselves? It’s impressive.

The red underwear is everywhere, you have to wear it apparently if your year is year of the Dog – the other underwear shot we just thought was funny and a good example of lost in translation. we did get some funny looks taking photos of underwear though.

some of the other shots are us walking through some of the back streets that day too – chinese grafitti which is pretty rare, some run down houses, and lots of washing, always.

work is still crazy, made worse this week with only 20% of us being in the office, but at least the phone isn ‘t ringing and the client is away and I managed to drag everyone out to see Norman Jay last night to dance off some stress which was well needed. we were the last on the dance floor as we should be!

I’ve also been initiated into late-night foot massages whose diagnoses have been spot on – bad back, week knees and I’m not sleeping! Bang on. This place may be mad but it’s in touch with its roots.