The Year of The Rat

Hello everyone and happy new year, again. That is right, its Chinese New Year, also known as Lunar New Year. As I sit here writing to you fireworks are exploding in the distance as well as quite close to my window. Last year I spent my month long holiday touring around parts of southern and central China and, as a result, spent Chinese New Year in Sanya, a tropical island in the South China sea. This year I only had six days off to celebrate and wanted to go to Guilin, the home of the karst topography that has been reproduced in innumerable pain tings. Well, it was not to be.

I am not sure if any of China's weather woes have been broadcast in the western media, but China has been wracked by its most severe winter storms since the late 1950's. The entire south and central part of China became a frozen mess late in January. This storm coincided with the beginning of the largest migration of people in human history. Chinese New Year is like Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, and everyone's birthday rolled into one. It is a traditional holiday with roots in agrarian myths and legends about a beast that would come at the end of the lunar cycle to cause havoc in a village. The villagers found that they could scare the beast away with firecrackers and the color red. The holiday has since morphed into an extremely important family gathering. Traditionally, family members return to their hometown to spend a week eating and spending some good quality time with the family. This applies to everyone. Rich or poor, old or young, all are expected to return home. For many, including migrant workers, it is the one time out of the entire year that they get to see their families. The migrant workers have the extra burden of.......well.....being migrant workers. They spend their entire year working and saving money to take back to their families and during Spring Festival they return home to bestow their meager income on their family. This year, the storms laid down inches of ice and topped it with feet of snow grinding the train system to a halt. During Spring Festival it is estimated that 230,000,000 people travel 'home for the holidays'. That is like the population of Germany, Italy, France, and England jumping on trains and switching houses all in one week. It is an amazing feat of organization when it runs smoothly but this year the weather had other plans. There were terrible stories of people waiting for trains for days and once they got on the train their 8 hour trip would turn into a harrowing 30 hour adventure. I was sitting at home the day before I was supposed to go on vacation watching all of this unfold on TV and I had a sudden realization, 'I am heading right into the heart of this tomorrow morning.'. I decided that I had to cancel my trip. I was hesitant to do so because this is my only time off for the foreseeable future. I mean, I like traveling more than most but the prospect of heading into the teeth of the chaos was too much even for me. So I guess I was fated to be here in Beijing for Spring Festival. Without initially realizing it staying in Beijing afforded me opportunities for more new and unique experiences.

Shortly after I refunded my ticket I received an email confirming my bids in the second round of Olympic ticket ordering. I got tickets for boxing and handball. I know what you are thinking, 'Handball? What?'. Here is my explanation: Handball is awesome. It is a fusion of soccer, lacrosse, and basketball. For me it is a must see event every four years. Along with track and field, basketball, swimming, and boxing, it is one of the events that defines the Olympics......for me. I have two tickets each to boxing and handball bringing my total for the games up to 8 tickets to 4 events.

Many of my friends left town/the country for Spring Festival. My two closest friends that remained in town were Bryne and Meskes. Meskes is my Dutch friend. He is kind of like Immanuel Kant for the Pepsi generation. We always have a good time. More about Meskes in a minute.

I was sitting around the apartment looking at my email when Bryne said, 'Hey, the Super Bowl is tomorrow. We should watch it somewhere.' My initial thought was, 'I don't care about the Super Bowl.' In fact I have lost touch with football over the last year and a half and had no real interest in seeing the Pats coronation party. My next thought was, 'Why is this Englishman concerned about American football?' I decided that I should agree in order to spread the interest in the national passion across the pond. Call me the Don Shula of diplomacy. I did some investigating and found that the biggest sports bar in town was having a huge bash starting at 5am. I set my alarm and woke early the next morning to begin a long day of eating and drinking. To my mild surprise the place was packed. It was a Monday morning here, the last working day before Spring Festival. Some people said that they had to go to work after the game. The game was of course phenomenal and the crowd was split down the middle so every play in the second half was met with both a chorus of cheers and boos. It was great fun. the party was sponsored by the NFL and they had some football throwing competitions and other games. Bryne and I ended up taking home a couple of footballs, really useless orbs in China. Watching the game with Bryne and I were his boss and his boss' family. They are form Canada. They were very nice people and the man actually has a passion for basketball. He was making plans with me to watch the NCAA tournament in March. He was a really nice guy and said that he coached against Steve Nash when Nash was in high school. I tend to think that every Canadian who likes basketball has some sort of Steve Nash story but who knows, the basketball loving community in Canada is probably small and closely knit.

Later that evening I went to dinner in a bar and restaurant district in Beijing. After dinner I decided to peruse the local DVD shops for some new movies (There Will Be Blood gets 6 out of 5 stars from me. Charlie Wilson's War gets 4 1/2). After a bit of shopping I was heading home. As I was calling for a taxi a really sad looking guy came up and asked me where something was. I told him and hesitated as I detected a familiar accent. I asked him if he was Israeli and he said he was. He is living and working in Suzhou and was in Beijing visiting his girlfriend. Earlier that evening she had broken up with him and he was quite broken up about it. He was saying how he just wanted to go drink alone and forget about this girl. I didn't think that was a good idea as he already looked to be a little worse for the wear. We chatted a bit more and he gets into a long story about how he has lived in the US for the last 10 years. His father and he moved there after his brother and mother were killed in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv. He ended up studying English as Columbia University and was now, doing what so many of us foreigners do over here, teaching English. I made a snap decision that this guy should probably come to my apartment to chill out for a bit before going to get a hostel. I mean, the guy divulged all of that info within five minutes of meeting him. I know Israelis are very direct and sometimes emotional but he was down there. Once he found out I was Jewish he smiled and I could see that talking to me was bringing him out of his haze. At my apartment he was telling me about how he thinks that all these bad things have happened to him because he is Jewish. I told him that he should never blame his religion for the bad things in his life. It is a feature of life that terrible things happen. This is the truth. It is equally true that amazing, wonderful things happen. I said that the tragedy that happened to his brother was not a result of him being Jewish but other people's perception and prejudice. His brother was not killed for being a Jew but killed because of someone else's opinions. I was of course speaking way out of my depth and sort of braced for impact after saying this. He decided that he could see my perspective and although he has his own thoughts about the situation he was happy to see it differently. After about 15 minutes of this sort of intense, peaceful, thought provoking conversation he decided he had to go and I was glad he decided because I was starting to question how I would ultimately get him out. As he left he was smiling and thanked me for my hospitality. I am sure I will never meet him again but our short conversation will not be forgotten by me. When he left he was smiling and even joking a bit. I was just happy to give him a port in his storm.

The next day preparations for Spring Festival began in earnest around Beijing. People in the streets finishing their last minute shopping at the markets. At 8 am I was awoken by the sound of fireworks. Now the fireworks are an interesting thing. Not at any other time of the year can you get fireworks in China. It is literally just like the 4th of July in the US. After sulking about the lack of availability of fireworks I was rewarded by a short trip around the block. I bought about 150 RMB ($20)worth of fireworks initially then decided that was not enough. For this I mostly blame my parents. If I were allowed to use fireworks in moderation on the 4th of July I probably wouldn't have this strong desire to buy the biggest baddest fireworks available now. Honestly, at that fireworks tent I channeled 10 year old me but this time with money to burn. I ended up getting 300 RMB worth and headed home to wait for the impending darkness. Later that day I received a call from Meskes inviting me to a 'party' being thrown by one of his colleagues. I accepted the invitation and later met him at this girl's house. The 'party' was little more than the girl, her flatmate, Meskes, and I making jiaozi. Jiaozi are dumplings and they are the traditional food of Spring Festival. While we were preparing the jiaozi the Siege of Beijing began. From 3pm two days ago until now, nothing but solid fireworks. Their apartment is situated at a big intersection in the eastern part of Beijing and it was a great viewing area for the festivities. We cooked and ate our pork, cabbage, onion, and ginger jiaozi and then joined the mayhem outside. They all made fun of me for bringing a giant bag of fireworks but they delighted in the display. It was a lot of fun. Later I went home to shower before meeting them out at the bars. When I got home Bryne had more fireworks so we went to shoot those off before going out. We met up with Meskes and the two girls and had a few drinks before the fireworks reached their peak at midnight. 5 minutes before I went outside and the streets were filled with smoke and the smell of gunpowder and burned cardboard. We made our way to a big street and there was a huge construction site where they were excavating an entire city block to build the foundation for what will undoubtedly be a massive construction project. We crossed into the construction site in order to put a metal barrier between us and the chaos on the streets. From there we had a 360 degree view of all the fireworks in Beijing for miles. It was truly a moment I will remember forever. After that we went to a club for a bit before heading home.

Now, as the celebration winds down and the last vestiges of the once mighty fireworks arsenal in Beijing are used up, I am preparing to head back to work. Bryne is on vacation in Korea visiting his girlfriend, other friends are out of town, and Meskes is going on a business trip. It is my birthday tomorrow and I think I will actually be happy to spend it in quiet reflection. The Year Of The Rat is supposed to be a year of new beginnings and accomplishments. I like the sound of that. We'll have to see how it plays out. Until then.....


Dsai Jien