Turns out I'm a terrible blogger. Somehow life has gotten in the way of my updating this blog, and many of you seem to have noticed. Apparently people actually read this! J
So I'm going to try to catch you all up on the last month of my time here in China, and then stay up during the remaining several months. However (not to make excuses, but…), I still don't have internet. Seriously, I have not spent more than 10 minutes on the internet at one time in more than a month. And once you add in the fact that my "brother" here who usually lets me use his internet is leaving at the end of the week, I really don't know how I'm going to stay connected. But I promise I'll try.
Where to start? I suppose I'll start with the freshest thing in my mind. How many of you like fireworks? Let me tell you, you have never experienced fireworks until you've experienced the biggest holiday in the country that invented fireworks!
Most traditional Chinese holidays are based on the lunar calendar, not the solar calendar we're all accustomed to. So that's where the concept of the "Chinese New Year" comes from: it's the change of the year on the lunar calendar. And for those of you who are not up on your dates according to the lunar calendar, Chinese New Year is today (January 26). Like celebrating the normal new year in the U.S., people stay up the night before to ring it in. The difference? In the U.S., we nonchalantly celebrate on December 31 and January 1. In China, they passionately celebrate the Chinese New Year for three weeks!
Sunday, January 18 (the 23rd day of the last month on the lunar calendar) was the official beginning of the holiday season. Although there's no recognized English name for the day, the literal translation is "Little New Year." From what I've gathered, there is nothing particularly special about the day, except that it marks the beginning of the season. Therefore, fireworks are shot off and people start making their preparations for the main holiday, Spring Festival (a.k.a. Chinese New Year).
I was in Dalian on Little New Year, which is a city about 4 hours by train from where I live in Shenyang. Since I'm not particularly in the habit of paying much attention to the lunar calendar, I actually didn't know it was a significant day. Until, that is, I was waiting in the train station for my train back to Shenyang, and fireworks started going off all around the city. I had a beautiful view of some from one of the windows, and actually met a Chinese girl with very good English who explained what was going on.
The week between Little New Year and Spring Festival is an experience in itself. Imagine: 1.3 billion people all trying to prepare for major celebrations, all shopping for tons of food, all stocking up because everything will be closed for three days, and all traveling back to their home cities to be with their families. Yeah. It was crazy. I made the mistake of not doing my own shopping until Saturday afternoon, the last day before everything closes. Haha. Oops. I spent thirty minutes in line to check out of the store, not because the cashiers were slow or that there weren't enough (all 30+ lines were open), but because of all the people. Crazy.
The week was also marked by an increase in noise and a decrease in taxis. Neither of which I was particularly fond of. The noise was caused by all the fireworks and firecrackers people were setting off. The decrease in taxis I suppose was caused by taxi drivers taking time off and the increase in people trying to use them, thus making it nearly impossible to grab a taxi anymore.
But the increase in noise and the decrease in taxis during the past week was only the tip of the iceberg. Sunday afternoon, the equivalent of New Year's Eve, I went to my normal fellowship. It took us a while to get a taxi, but then to our surprise, it only took us 5 minutes to drive all the way to our building! Usually it takes 15 minutes or so (more in heavy traffic), but the roads were nearly completely empty! No cars, no taxis, no people. It was actually quite creepy. Coming home after fellowship was a similar experience, and our typical habit of going out for dinner afterwards was obviously interrupted because no restaurants were open.
So I got home, made myself some dinner (using the ingredients I had so brilliantly stocked up on Saturday), and then just hung out waiting. I had been warned that it would be futile to try going to sleep before midnight, so I just waited around. And that advice proved to be correct! From 6:30 p.m. when I was coming home until sometime after I fell asleep at 2:00 a.m., fireworks were going on constantly. I'm pretty sure there was not a single 5 minute period where I didn't hear the sound of fireworks. And the highlights? From 11:45 – 12:15, there were solid fireworks in every direction! Anywhere you looked, all you could see were fireworks. I stood at my window and watched fireworks literally everywhere I could see. Wow, it was intense!
Seriously, any fireworks fans out there need to see the fireworks on Chinese New Year in China sometime. Nothing compares.
There was just one other thought, though, that crossed my mind as I was watching the skyline disappear into the smoke of the fireworks: it's no wonder that the air pollution here is as it is.
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