Happy “Niu” Year
Today is the 12th Day of the Year of the Ox, or niu in Chinese, hence the bad puns appearing everywhere. There is even a visual pun based around the shape of an ox’s head and the currency symbol for the Chinese yuan: wishing you lots of cash in the year ahead, a more than usually heartfelt wish, considering the shape of the world’s finances.
This year we stayed in Chengdu for the holiday itself, then set off on a road trip to the western part of Sichuan, the far eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. More about that later. We choose to depart after the New Year because the few days before the holiday are a bad, bad time to travel; in fact a bad, bad time to go out of doors. I had to go to Carrefour the day before the holiday and it was a zoo. Everyone was shopping their socks off for holiday food and gifts to take home for family and friends, then cramming into cars, buses and trains to get home in time for the big celebration on New Year’s Eve.
Xiao Long and her extended family took the train back to their hometown, but were only able to buy 6 seats between 17 people, so most of them had to stand or perch in the aisle. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the journey had only taken 6 hours as scheduled, but delays added another 11 hours to their travel time, and they didn’t reach home until 3 am the following morning. Xiao Long said the train was so full that you couldn’t even use the toilets: all the cubicles were full of passengers who couldn’t find any other space to stand in.
Meanwhile, in the city, orange tents had appeared on every street corner selling fireworks of every size, shape and possible description. Two years ago when we stayed around for the New Year, fireworks were only sold outside the city limits, but apparently they have been allowed to move into town on the grounds that letting off fireworks is a Chinese cultural tradition. It is a tradition that every man, woman and child indulged in this year, judging from the nightly spectacle visible, and audible, from every corner of our apartment. I have seen many fireworks displays on Bonfire Night in the UK, and on the 4th of July in the USA, but even the display put on over Manhattan only lasts 20 minutes. Here they go on all night, for around 2 weeks. On New Year’s Eve there were multiple fireworks displays throughout the city for hours and hours, culminating in a frenzy of explosions around midnight. It was amazingly beautiful and a lot of fun, but you can only watch the same types of fizz-bang coloured lights for so long and after a while we grew blasé and watched a movie instead. However, there was no getting way from the noise, or the smell.
The next day the ground of our compound was littered with ash and dead fireworks. One chubby ten-year old boy we met playing outside commented that the marble-floored stage area usually used for rollerblading and bike-riding was so dirty you could play baseball on it. Then he calmly took a cigarette lighter and a bunch of firecrackers out of his pocket and started lighting them and throwing them into the ornamental pond. The attitude towards firework safety is different from what I am used to. All the orange tents bear signs saying that fireworks must be let off at least 10 metres away, but no-one takes any notice. Under the cultural park underpass, a couple of guys were buying rockets from an orange tent, then crouching down to let them off on the busy street corner a few feet away, with vehicles passing in four directions. They explained that the rockets were sending all of their misfortune from the past year up into space, clearing the way for better luck in the coming year. Fair enough, but it would have been really bad luck if one had veered off into the path of an oncoming vehicle, or worse, into the back of the orange tent.
On the second day of the New Year, when the roads were quiet because most people were at home eating, or visiting friends and relatives nearby, we set off on our trip. As we were packing up the car at the entrance to our compound, three children were setting off firecrackers and little rockets in the gateway, where cars come in and out. I judged the children to be aged 6, 7 and 9. There was no adult with them, so they were lighting them by themselves, then rushing off to the orange tent on the corner to buy more. The gate guards looked on indulgently and cheered when each one went off. In my mind, the potential for horrible accidents was so great I could hardly watch them, but perhaps I just don’t get it. Probably the parents of those children would have considered us irresponsible if they had known we were packing up our car to set off over icy roads and mountain passes for a holiday at 4,200 metres above sea-level.
This year we stayed in Chengdu for the holiday itself, then set off on a road trip to the western part of Sichuan, the far eastern edge of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. More about that later. We choose to depart after the New Year because the few days before the holiday are a bad, bad time to travel; in fact a bad, bad time to go out of doors. I had to go to Carrefour the day before the holiday and it was a zoo. Everyone was shopping their socks off for holiday food and gifts to take home for family and friends, then cramming into cars, buses and trains to get home in time for the big celebration on New Year’s Eve.
Xiao Long and her extended family took the train back to their hometown, but were only able to buy 6 seats between 17 people, so most of them had to stand or perch in the aisle. This wouldn’t have been so bad if the journey had only taken 6 hours as scheduled, but delays added another 11 hours to their travel time, and they didn’t reach home until 3 am the following morning. Xiao Long said the train was so full that you couldn’t even use the toilets: all the cubicles were full of passengers who couldn’t find any other space to stand in.
Meanwhile, in the city, orange tents had appeared on every street corner selling fireworks of every size, shape and possible description. Two years ago when we stayed around for the New Year, fireworks were only sold outside the city limits, but apparently they have been allowed to move into town on the grounds that letting off fireworks is a Chinese cultural tradition. It is a tradition that every man, woman and child indulged in this year, judging from the nightly spectacle visible, and audible, from every corner of our apartment. I have seen many fireworks displays on Bonfire Night in the UK, and on the 4th of July in the USA, but even the display put on over Manhattan only lasts 20 minutes. Here they go on all night, for around 2 weeks. On New Year’s Eve there were multiple fireworks displays throughout the city for hours and hours, culminating in a frenzy of explosions around midnight. It was amazingly beautiful and a lot of fun, but you can only watch the same types of fizz-bang coloured lights for so long and after a while we grew blasé and watched a movie instead. However, there was no getting way from the noise, or the smell.
The next day the ground of our compound was littered with ash and dead fireworks. One chubby ten-year old boy we met playing outside commented that the marble-floored stage area usually used for rollerblading and bike-riding was so dirty you could play baseball on it. Then he calmly took a cigarette lighter and a bunch of firecrackers out of his pocket and started lighting them and throwing them into the ornamental pond. The attitude towards firework safety is different from what I am used to. All the orange tents bear signs saying that fireworks must be let off at least 10 metres away, but no-one takes any notice. Under the cultural park underpass, a couple of guys were buying rockets from an orange tent, then crouching down to let them off on the busy street corner a few feet away, with vehicles passing in four directions. They explained that the rockets were sending all of their misfortune from the past year up into space, clearing the way for better luck in the coming year. Fair enough, but it would have been really bad luck if one had veered off into the path of an oncoming vehicle, or worse, into the back of the orange tent.
On the second day of the New Year, when the roads were quiet because most people were at home eating, or visiting friends and relatives nearby, we set off on our trip. As we were packing up the car at the entrance to our compound, three children were setting off firecrackers and little rockets in the gateway, where cars come in and out. I judged the children to be aged 6, 7 and 9. There was no adult with them, so they were lighting them by themselves, then rushing off to the orange tent on the corner to buy more. The gate guards looked on indulgently and cheered when each one went off. In my mind, the potential for horrible accidents was so great I could hardly watch them, but perhaps I just don’t get it. Probably the parents of those children would have considered us irresponsible if they had known we were packing up our car to set off over icy roads and mountain passes for a holiday at 4,200 metres above sea-level.
posted by Cat Platt at 11:11 am
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