Chinese New Year, or 'Spring Festival', is a big deal in China. As you've probably read in the annual news articles, mass migration occurs as millions of people travel hundreds of miles in order to return to their hometowns and families. So, when my Chinese friend William invited me to spend Spring Festival with his family, I leapt at the chance - especially as his hometown is a tiny rural village where they preserve the traditions of Spring Festival far more than in China's big cities.

On the morning of Thursday 30th January, I got a train to Weifang, a provincial-level city in Shandong Province about an hour's train journey from Qingdao. William picked me up from the station in his rather swanky car, and drove me to a lovely restaurant where we were to meet a small portion of his sprawling family for lunch. Apart from Will's dad, I honestly couldn't tell you who they were… over the course of the next 36 hours or so I'd end up meeting around 50+ of his relatives, and kinship terms in Mandarin are notoriously complicated. Still, we had a tasty lunch of local delicacies before piling into various cars for the 30-minute drive to their rural hometown called Yinma.

Will had repeatedly warned me of the 'basic conditions' of the houses in his hometown, and that turned out to be a fairly accurate description. Only some of the houses had electricity, none had running water or heating and the toilets were all just deep pits in the front yard. We went to his granddad's old house first, which was one of the simplest houses we went to, but typical in its layout - you'd enter into a room and on the back wall there would be a huge and ornate family tree, upon which they'd write the names of their deceased ancestors. In front of the family tree was a little altar, where they would burn incense, lay upright chopsticks, and offer sacrifices of food- usually dumplings, rice, dates and fish. Aside from this room and a little storage room, there was only one other; a sort of bedroom/living room consisting of a few stools and one large, hard bed on which all the family members would sleep.

At this point, all the men in the village went off to visit the graveyard, an activity which it seemed the women weren't allowed to participate in… so I was left back in the house with one of Will's many aunts. Making conversation was pretty difficult; she was around 50 years old and had lived in the village all her life, so she didn't speak standard Mandarin but the fairly intelligible local dialect. Moreover, she'd never been anywhere in China, not even to Qingdao a mere hour away, so topics of conversation dried up fairly quickly! She was lovely though; she'd pour me endless cups of tea, and she kept giving me bags of nuts and dried fruit and ordering me in that very well-meaning but sometimes slightly aggressive way to 'EAT QUICKLY!' haha.

When the men returned, Will and I headed off to one of his other aunt's houses in the village; it was a bit bigger, cleaner and in a far better condition than his grandfather's house, so Will had picked it as our place to stay the night. We spent a while there chatting to Will's '大哥' (literally means 'elder brother', but actually he was Will's elder male cousin - confusing), while his aunt cooked for us in the 'kitchen'. At around 6.30pm we sat down for a yummy home-cooked meal of dumplings, various fried vegetables, and a local speciality consisting of rather strange cold meat jelly.

After finishing up, our New Year's Eve house-hopping began. First stop: back to his grandfather's house. It was all very merry; we ate yet more dumplings, drank beers that had been warmed up by the fire and some grim local spirits, and half-watched the Chinese New Year gala on TV. The evening took a slightly awkward turn when Will's uncle asked me what I thought of the Cultural Revolution, which he'd lived through. I manage to avoid replying by asking him what HE thought of the Cultural Revolution haha, to which he basically replied that it was terrible if you were rich/educated but ok if you were poor/uneducated, as Will's family all were back then.

After a while it was time to move on. Stop no. 2: Will's grandmother's house. But it can't have been his actual grandma, as she'd have lived with the granddad, and his maternal grandma lives in Jinan, so it must have been a great aunt or something. Anyway, more of Will's cousins and uncles/aunts were there, and they were great fun, feeding me strawberries and yet more tea. One of Will's cousin's wives spoke a little English so she took a great interest in me.

But before we could get stuck into a conversation, it was back to his granddad's house again as it was approaching midnight which meant firework-time! (Although the impression I get from the past few weeks is that ALL THE TIME is firework-time in China. It's like living in a war zone, being here over New Year). After setting various things on fire, we headed back to the house we were going to stay the night in. They all kowtowed to their ancestors, lighting incense and burning paper money in front of the altar. Afterwards it was time for… you guessed it, more dumplings! Stuffed stupid, it was now 1.30am and time for bed. I shared a bed with Will's aunty, which I was fine with - although I panicked slightly when she brought in a bucket and indicated that we should use it as a toilet to save us going out into the yard in the night. Much to my relief, neither of us needed to go!

So, that was New Year's Eve.

New Year's Day was really interesting too. We had to get up at 6.30am for some reason - when I asked Will why, he just said 'Chinese tradition', urgh. Things got worse when breakfast was laid out on the table - the remainders of last night's dumplings. KILL ME NOW.

Thankfully, the rest of the day was far more enjoyable. Basically, the tradition in his rural village is that on New Year's Day, the men and boys go out early to visit all their family and friends in the village and wish them a happy new year (a tradition called '拜年'), the oldies stay at home to greet them, and the women… hide in the back of the house? I don't know, I didn't see any…strange. Anyway, I was allowed to tack on with the men of Will's family, which was great fun. Must have been a strange sight though - the dusty, run-down streets of the village were filled with small groups of Chinese men wandering around to 拜年, and then there was me; blonde and female and not at all Chinese - I received many a funny look.

This ' 拜年' process was a fascinating one; the men would all march in to the house, shake hands with the old man and nod at the old woman, and wish them a happy new year, whilst kowtowing to that family's altar/family tree. They'd be gone in 30 seconds and on to the next house. It was great for a nosy person like me, as I got to see into over 25 or so houses, and meet a huge number of his relatives.

As I didn't really feel comfortable kowtowing, my role in the process was a bit different. I'd bounce in, smiling and wishing everyone a happy new year, before being grabbed by the feisty old lady of the house, usually wearing an awesome combination of mismatching cardigans and leggings, and she'd proceed to pat my arms and hair, whilst shouting out "WHO IS SHE? WHEN ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED?!" hahaha. Then Will would rush over and try to explain that we were just friends, although some of them weren't having it. I suppose that as Chinese New Year is such an important family occasion, many people equate bringing a friend of the opposite sex home with introducing your fiancé!

This process lasted from around 7.30am-10.30am, after which Will took me back to Weifang, where we had lunch. My train back to Qingdao wasn't until the evening, so we decided to try out Weifang's folk art museum in the afternoon, which ended up being pretty rubbish but we had a laugh there all the same. We spent the rest of the day at a different aunt's flat, surrounded by lots of Will's adorably cute young cousins. His aunt cooked up a storm for dinner: homemade sausage, that meat jelly again, shrimps, fish, insects, fried vegetables and some lovely red wine. Will's father, who is a lawyer and obviously more well educated than the rest of Will's family, was slightly intimidating; he asked me lots of questions about what I knew about Chinese culture and which Chinese classics had I read etc. This was probably the ONE time I'd ever been grateful for learning Classical Chinese - I think he was impressed with the number and range of important texts we'd studied.

After dinner we drank tea and chatted, before heading outside to light yet more fireworks. Just before I left his aunt, who I'd only met that afternoon, gave me a present of a scarf and some lucky money in a red envelope - I was very touched. Then I was given a lift back to the station, where I boarded an almost empty train back to Qingdao. I was so glad to have experienced such an important part of Chinese culture, to have met so many welcoming and interesting people, and to have had a glimpse into rural life in China - certainly very different from life in a big city!

My trip to Will's hometown brought my winter holiday travels to an end. I'm now back in Qingdao, but still have another month until classes start! I imagine it'll be a quiet month, but after all the adventures I've had since Dec 13th, I'm quite looking forward a few weeks of normality!