More on the New Year

According to Chinese legend, the God of Prosperity was born on the fifth day of the year. Anyone who lights fireworks on this day will be blessed with prosperity, and the earlier in the day the fireworks are lit, the better.

Today (Friday) is the fifth day of the New Year's celebrations, hence the fireworks at midnight last night. I had read something about this not to long ago, but I'd forgotten about it until someone mentioned it today.

The Lunar New Year isn't only celebrated in China; I know that Koreans celebrate it, too, and some of the southeast Asian countries. Also, in traditional Asian culture, you do not grow a year older on you're birthday; you grow older on New Year's. As soon as someone is born, they are considered one year old (because they are in their first year if life.) They become two years old at their first New Year. Then they remain two years old until the next New Year, when they become three, and so on. So if you were born just before New Year's, you would be considered two years old even if you were born only two months before.

New Year's Insanity

It's Chinese New Year. So much for a parade and a big group of people dressed up as a long red dragon; this is the real deal. You aren't just watching the show; you are literally in the show. It is crazy. It's exactly like the fireworks at the Fourth of July, just a whole lot bigger and much, much closer to the ground. Fireworks are very legal and very plentiful in China, and these aren't just the little noisemakers-and-sparklers kind of fireworks, these are real fireworks. China is the land of fireworks, always has been and forever will be. There are absolutely no words to describe the whole atmosphere of it. Literally everyone is setting off some. In the courtyards, on the sidewalk, off of the roofs of buildings, etc. Our apartment is on the fifth floor, right next to the street that runs through the complex (the perfect place to light fireworks), so we get front-row seats when they explode right outside of our window (sometimes ricocheting off of the sides of the buildings.)

The official celebrations started on Sunday, New Year's Eve. We get two whole weeks off for the New Year, so we had full license to stay up until two in the morning. At around 10 in the evening, they started setting off lots of fireworks. Then it died down, and at about 11:30 it started up again at full force. I could hardly hear my own voice in all of the noise. It lasted for a few more hours. My grandma, who is visiting, is staying in my brother's bedroom, which is on the side next to the street. She said that she was woken a few times by people lighting fireworks in the street.

The last few days, there haven't been too many exciting firework shows, but today (Thursday night) they were doing a big show again. I was already in my pajamas and am too lazy to change back into by clothes to go outside, so I stuck my head outside the window to watch. They were lighting rockets in the middle courtyard of our complex, and, behind those, I saw ones being lit in the complex across the street. I also saw them being reflected off of the building to my right from where more were being launched on the other side of our building. I closed my eyes and pretended that there was a big thunderstorm, just for fun. The big fireworks were the thunder and the little crackling ones were the rain. It also helped that it had been raining hard earlier in the day, so rain still was dripping off of the side of the building and onto my head.

In short: Chinese New Year is absolute insanity. There's no way to describe it with justice; just come here and see for yourself

Poetry

I enjoy writing poetry. I don't know why, but I've always disliked writing stories, however, poems are just a lot of fun. I used to think that absolutely all poems had to rhyme, but now I emphasize more on the rhythm, as you can see by the short poem I've put in the margin of my page. (All I can write about right now is China.) The poem below has some rhyming, though. Some parts of it I find are better than others, and some parts of it you wouldn't completely understand unless you'd been here yourself.



I step into another place,
It’s almost like another time,
So many people staring at me
Like I’m some sort
Of celebrity
Otherwise simple parts of life
Have no rhyme
Or reason

I search for things
I used to have
And used to take
For granted;
Now I see
How much I loved them
Once they are taken from me,
Like Scout when she was told
That she was no longer allowed
To read*

I think I’m going crazy,
I must be getting mad,
Just thinking of all the things
That yesterday
I had

I see the “modern” buildings made
With no rhyme,
No reason,
And nothing in between
I feel like, any second now,
They’ll fall
To smithereens

I’m walking down the sidewalk
And forget to watch my feet,
I trip on something jutting out
And my face now meets
The street.

We’re living in this crazy place
Trapped one hundred years in the past;
Always building,
Then tearing down,
Since nothing new
Will last


–Emma— Jan 12, 2009



(*This refers to a part of To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Upon first starting school, the main character, Scout Finch, is dismayed when her teacher informs her that she must "forget" how to read and write, which she has been doing as long as she can remember, so she can learn it again from scratch. Scout then proceeds to tell the audience that she never truly loved to read until the right to do so was taken away from her. For some reason, this thought has always stuck with me.)

Hong Kong and Macau

I would have written sooner, but I was sick with a fever and slept in bed all week. I have been reading Little Women because we found a copy in a bookstore in Hong Kong, and I would have been reading it, too, except that I was at the part where Beth is ill with scarlet fever and has a sore throat and a headache and stays in bed for days, which, needless to say, I did not feel like reading in that context.

Hong Kong was really fun. It felt much more Western, while still feeling Chinese enough. We also could find some good old Western things that you can't find in the rest of China, like American-style shopping malls, electronics, bookstores, and movie theaters. And salt-and-vinegar chips. We got the iPods that we'd been wanting for Christmas. Mine is purple! And I can put exactly whatever songs I want on it! Yay!

We also went to Macau, which was a Portuguese colony for 400 years until 1999. It literally feels like Mediterranean Europe, except that everyone is Asian. The street food is just great!!! There is the front of an old Portuguese church, with all of the sides gone, and nearby is a big park and a stone fort that you can walk around on top. Now Macau has become a kind of Las Vegas of the East, so there is a big, ugly casino-hotel that dominates the horizon, and a number of the cannons on the top of the fort were pointed straight at the building, so John and I had fun pretending to shoot it down.