Beijing, China -- This year started off in a traditional way with a technology twist.
I learned that by respecting the traditions of China, and hiving efforts to be a part of them can open doors. The 360Fashion Network team and I made a really cool Chinese New Year card with augmented reality. It made a big impression on our clients and partners.
For the festivities I was invited into the home of one of our local partner, Miss Yan, and made a western salad for dinner, and watched them cook Chinese veggies for me.
At midnight, the blitzkreig started with fireworks that I'm sure you can see from Saturn. We started making dumplings that we ate together after midnight. I asked what was the meaning of making them together. Miss Yan told me that it is so we will know that we will never be alone. We make them together and eat them together so we know that no matter what happens we have a family to back you up.
You can tell which dumplings I made because they look more like ravioli than little bonbon packages.
At the table we all took turns giving speeches and toasting to each other. Many of the people toasted to me saying they greatly admired that I was a woman alone, in a foreign country, where I did not speak the language, and doing business successfully. They said they would never do that, pick up and leave their homeland alone. The key word being "alone". Funny, how what seems strange and slightly uncomfortable to me, is being "together". Its a concept that I can't get my head around but that my dear friend Joanna Weidenmiller has spent a great deal of time teaching me to better interact with humans than computers. Mostly, I have found, if you want to make your dream come true exactly as you see it in your head, you have to go it alone. You rarely find some people who want yo do the same thing, especially if it involves risk. At the same time my yogi says that there is not one single thing we can do on this planet that is not without the help of another. Go on, try it, I dare you. I am sure that someone along the way had to be involved to make it possible. So this illusion that we are alone is so great its a mass hallucination.
So making dumplings is a good way to give thanks to all the parts of the puzzle that come together to make us eat.
Happy Chinese New Year 2013.
