Chinese Lunar New Year

When I first heard that we might be going back to China, I was really excited that we might be here for Chinese New Year. I mean what would be cooler that being in China for the largest party in the world, right?      mmm...naivety strikes again.

Gōng Xǐ Fā Cái!

This is the common greeting (in Mandarin) said, meaning happy new year, congratulations and prosperity. Many children greet their relatives with Gōng xǐ fā cái, hóng bāo ná lái, meaning happy new year, now give me a red envelope (red envelopes are given mostly to children with money in them).

I did not take this picture

Spring Festival - A Brief History

First, some background on Chinese Lunar New Year. It is the biggest holiday in Chinese culture and is actually referred to as Spring Festival. The holiday is officially celebrated for 15 days, though there are also traditions that are celebrated on the days preceding the holiday. On the days preceding the festival, people clean everything. This symbolizes cleaning out the old of the last year, including the bad luck. Each day has specific activities and foods. There are days when you visit specific people, like your oldest relatives, the husband's parents, the wife's parents, etc. The firecrackers that are so common are shot off to send away the old year and welcome new year, the DEAFening sound is also believed to scare away evil spirits. One tradition that particularly peaked my interest was the wearing of red on the first day, especially red underwear. Red is one of the luckiest colors in Chinese tradition, standing for loyalty, success and happiness. It is important to wear red underwear if it is your zodiac year, like this is mine as I am turning 24, because that is believed to be an unlucky year for you and it will ward off this unluckiness. (Unfortunately, China failed to tell me this and I didn't have any red underwear or even any red clothes, so hopefully the gods will be satisfied with the maroon Like Summer T-shirt that I wore). The festival ends on the 15th day with Lantern Festival, everyone walks around with lanterns and candles are lit to guide wayward spirits home. Lastly, due to the visiting of family members, it is also the Chunyun period, know as the largest annual human migration. "The number of passenger journeys during the Chunyun period has exceeded the population of China, hitting 2.26 billion in 2008." I had a "Oh, Oh! There's a line, should I get in it?" moment when we left our hotel one day and saw a rather large line equipped with a security guard. When we reached the front of the line, we realized that it was for a travel agency and people were booking for Spring Festival. For more on the specifics, check out Wikipedia, it is a pretty good article.

Spring Festival - A Reality

I lived in the southwest of the US for a large chunk of my childhood, especially for the majority of my formative years. In case you are unaware the southwest is a vast wasteland of desert where large amounts of people shouldn't try to live, but do anyway. For this reason they are REALLY strict about fireworks. So you don't get a lot of fireworks shows and when you do they are done by the city. Now, like any respectable person, I still love fire and am a slight pyro when it comes down to it, but I have never been much of a fan of fireworks. My husband thinks this might be because I have never actually used fireworks myself, apart from sparklers which are awesome. I just don't really understand why they are so cool, they all just seem the same to me after a while. Now, I knew there were going to be fireworks during the New Year, I mean the US does fireworks and I have seen Chinese movies. But when we started seeing signs a few days before the festival was starting saying No Fireworks!, by stores, inside malls, in the subway tunnels, I started to think maybe I had underestimated the Chinese. I would come to realize that I had underestimated my underestimation.

We have a great hotel room on the 33rd floor of our hotel and therefore a rather nice view of the city. The firecrackers had already been going for a bit on New Years Eve, but once the sun went down, the light show began. I thought I knew what a fireworks show looked like, but I had no idea. For the Pittsburghers, imagine being in the Steel Tower/UPMC building facing away from Ohio River. Then imagine that throughout the Southside 25 different houses are setting off fireworks, then another 15 on North Side, and 50 all over Downtown, Oakland and Squirrel Hill, continuously. I am not talking little fireworks, I mean regular Pirates win fireworks.  The US has nothing on China when it comes to ringing in the New Year, the rest of the world has nothing on China. Every couple of minutes I would think that different sections were finale-ing. But the fireworks continued for hours, slowly increasing in intensity.  At midnight, even through closed windows, all you could smell was the gunpowder, the city was lit up in a way I have never seen. Though I hope to never be in the middle of a war zone during an epic battle, this is what it must look and sound like. It was certainly one of the most incredible sights I have ever seen.

That night certainly won me over for the awesomeness of fireworks... It has been the remaining days of the Spring Festival that have made me loath them more than ever before. In the following days, there is always a firecracker or explosion of some sort going off somewhere. I am so sick and tired of hearing them and being woken up by them, that I can't really take it anymore. We had met two couples, the one both Malaysian and the other the woman is Chinese and the man is a New Zealander. Both couples explained to us that they leave the city during New Year because they can't stand to be here. We were confused, but now we understand.

In conclusion, I wish we had a family to celebrate Spring Festival with, it might make it more bearable. Or maybe not.