Février en chine, quelle joie, quelle chance (or, Happy New Year!)

Yesterday was Chinese New Year, and I wasn’t sure quite what to expect, except a climax of the constant explosions of fireworks that had been going on since I got to Beijing (but more on that later). I decided I had seen all I needed to see in Beijing and stayed around the hostel hanging out with the other guests and employees. I helped them prepare some of the ingredients for the dumplings they were making (picture below), and later had my dumpling-stuffing ability mocked by everyone who worked at the hostel. It turned out all right in the end, since all of the dumplings turned out uniformly stuck-together and delicious.

After our dumpling feast, the stash of fireworks was brought out. We set them off in the small outdoor hallway of the hostel, filling it with smoke and distracting the owner’s three-year-old daughter from her fear of foreigners. Once the fireworks allocated for before midnight were exhausted, we retired to the common room. We started playing a drinking game that involved counting in Chinese and multiplication tables, neither of which is quite my strong suit. After the game was over, I hung out with the other guests at the hostel, who were from all over the world. There were guys from Finland, Germany, and Wales (he even spoke Welsh and had a Welsh name!), as well as a group of Canadians and a family from Slovenia. I was surprised there were no other Americans around, and I’m not exactly sure what that indicates.

Then the celebration really started. Imagine 15 million people all lighting fireworks at once, mostly kinds that are outlawed in most of the world. We went up on the roof of the hostel to watch, and in every direction there were displays to match the best Fourth of July celebration you’ve ever seen. We walked around the streets, where firecrackers were setting off car alarms, and strangers offered to let us light up their fireworks. The streets were shrouded in smoke and covered with firecracker wrappers. Cars foolish enough to be on the road had to swerve around mortars that were about to explode. This morning, I even found bits of debris in my hair. No picture I took quite captured the moment, but hopefully you can get a feel from the expressions on people’s faces below (well not really, but they’re a nice bunch).

In the true fashion of a country with a labor surplus, the streets were completely clean by the time I headed off to the airport at six this morning. I’m in Chengdu now, which is in southwestern China. It’s warm but drizzly here, a nice change from the freezing cold of Beijing. I’ll be here for a couple of days before heading to Chongqing and (hopefully) a boat down the Yangzi.