Chinese New Year!

Well it's been quite some time since my last post. I could say that it's because nothing interesting has happened, but I'd be lying. I've just been busy and lazy; a bad combination if you want to get some blog posts done.

Anywhoo, here's the abridged version of the past several months:

I went home for Christmas. If you were in the Madison or Milwaukee areas, you know that, and you saw me, so I don't know why I'm talking to you about it. If you weren't, now you know. It was delightful to see everybody, and I wish that I could come home more often, but it's 太贵了！

Sabine (that would be my girlfriend in case it's been so long since you've heard from me that this knowledge has shriveled up and passed away with your other memories of me) is in France getting her citizenship. We're still not sure when she'll be back here in Beijing, but it shouldn't be too much longer.

Got a promotion at work. No new title, but I'm a strategic adviser to the CEO. Been doing a little bit of everything at work. Proposal writing, HR policy writing, interviews, reading, creating, recruiting, etc. Funny that none of these things involve math . . . maybe they should throw some accounting and finance at me as well, just to round things out.

Got a guitar. This is actually a big deal for me because I rarely buy things for myself, but seeing as today is my birthday, I decided to treat myself. Turns out that I should've made the purchase much earlier because a guitar, stand, carrying case, picks, capo, and strings together only set me back about $95 . . . I was kinda expecting to spend somewhere in the $200-$400 range, so you can imagine my delight.

Now onto the feature of the post. Chinese New Year. Last year I was in Thailand with Mike during this holiday, so I had no idea what it was like. But here's the background: Chinese New Year is based on the lunar calendar, so the dates change every year. This year the new year happened to fall on my birthday exactly, which is completely awesome because it means that I don't have to work. This holiday also happens to be the most important and widely celebrated holiday in China. This fact should've tipped me off that it is pretty cool to be in China during the event, but for some reason (mostly because my friends just talk about how terrifying this week is, rather than saying how cool it is) I didn't really expect that it would be very interesting.

Wow was I wrong. Chinese New Year in Beijing is, without a doubt, one of the top 5 experiences that I've had in my life.

(Aside: Currently the plan is for me to stay until August of 2009, so if you are looking for a vacation in January or February of 2009 - I'm not sure of the dates for next year's celebration - consider making a trip to Beijing during the New Year. It will be slightly more expensive, but very worth it.)

So, here is my Chinese New Year story: I left my apartment at about 7:30pm to meet my friend Erica and find a restaurant for our friends on Ghost Street - a very popular dining area in Beijing's Northeast. I walk downstairs, step outside and see that the ground is covered with wrappers and remnants of firecrackers. Not too surprising because I've been hearing sounds of explosions all day.

I hail a cab and tell him where I'm headed, and the driver takes off and makes a right onto Chunxiu lu, a medium-sized city street. The street looks like a gauntlet of fireworks that we must pass through in order to reach the prize of food at the end, but the cab driver doesn't take any time to assess the situation. He just plunges on ahead as roman candles, firecrackers and huge fourth-of-July style fireworks shoot off all around us.

Since nobody has a yard, all of the fireworks are lit in the center of the street. Thus, my cab driver just swerves around the fountains and firecrackers that are exploding and burning. He doesn't even bat an eye when firecrackers are flung at my passenger door and explode close enough that I can hear the casing hitting the cab. All he says to me is "在北京过春节是最好! (Celebrating Chinese New Year in Beijing is the best!)"

He takes me to where I'm going to meet my friend, and the madness continues. The roads are scary enough that a Beijinger riding his bike stops next to me to ask my opinion on whether it is safe for him to try and ride on the street or not. I tell him I think it's ok and he takes off trying to avoid being burned.

Soon after Erica arrives and explains that she just avoided a very close encounter with flaming balls coming from a roman candle thanks to a kind man who warned her not to wait for a moment before crossing into the fireworks' trajectory. As this is her 3rd year in Beijing for the New Year, the "awe factor" has worn off for her and she's just hoping that she can avoid burning or explosions for another 14 days.

So we walk on to our restaurant, trying to notice and avoid the firecrackers that have been placed in our paths (since the Chinese don't do a good job of warning you when you're walking into an area that's about to explode - I think that they just find it funny when foreigners freak out as things explode under their feet). We finally arrive, meet our friends, sit down and eat.

After dinner (in a room where the still drying wall-paper glue got most of us a little high, I think), we went to Houhai, and chilled at a bar until about 11:30. Then the cool stuff happened.

Beijing is a big city. About 14 million people big. Fireworks are not regulated during Chinese New Year, so I conservatively estimate that 2 million people buy fireworks (one in 7 sounds reasonable right?). And the vast majority of the fireworks set off by these 2 million people are set off the one hour between 11:30 pm and 12:30 am.

Hence, at 11:30 my friends and I walked out into the middle of Houhai lake which is surrounded by the City of Beijing, and we just watched. Imagine the largest fireworks display that you have ever seen. Now imagine that that same display is going on in front of you, behind you, to your left, to your right, basically 360 degrees around you. If you can imagine it, you have an idea of what the fireworks on Chinese New Year are like. I wish that the little video that my friend Fleur took would do it justice, but I know it won't. I'll still try to post it though, so you can get a feeling for it.

After an hour of standing and watching, the frequency of explosions finally began to slow, and we went back inside and relaxed for the rest of the evening until my eventual return home.

I hear that the fireworks will continue tonight, so we'll have to see. Either way, I'm excited. This was cool. If you ever get the chance to be in Beijing for Chinese New Year, don't pass it up.