Is it a bull? Is it an ox? Who cares, it's Chinese New Year!
The whole of China has gone de-mob happy (this being one of only two weeks' holiday that most of them get each year), trains and planes are filled to bursting, the shops are crammed with people making last minute purchases of festive fare, and the trees are full of pretty lights. Everything pretty much shuts down for a week, and attempting to get anything done in the preceding couple of weeks is a struggle. Sound familiar? Having just spent Christmas in the UK it gives one a distinct sense of déjà vu. I have to say though, they really know how to do fairy lights in Harbin. There are even fake trees whose branches are made entirely from lights. Princes Street, eat your heart out.
Curiously, the new year holiday is more regularly referred to as 'Spring Festival', which is kind of hard to reconcile with the temperatures of -20 and the permanent covering of ice. Usually it all happens in February, but being a lunar festival (the second new moon after the winter solstice - or the first new moon in Aquarius, according to your taste) it does sometimes fall early, like those annoying years when Easter's in March. Technically this is the year of the Earth Ox, not just any old ox, and each year is also considered either yin or yang on an alternating cycle, so the astrological thing is much more complicated than it at first appears. I'm not going to pamper you with links here though as I'm sure you can do your own Google search if you're genuinely curious about it!
All day and night for the last week we've been deafened by the sound of fireworks and firecrackers going off all around. The firecrackers are in long strings which means the explosions go on for ages. They're allowed to do this for a week before New Year and two weeks afterwards, but not at any other time. Great - three whole weeks of being kept awake until 2am on weeknights and woken up at 9am on Sunday. Guy Fawkes night has nothing on this. If Russia ever decided to invade China, this would be the time to do it - they could shell for a week before anyone noticed.
Unfortunately there's not much to see though. You do see the occasional firework going up, but the emphasis is definitely on noise rather than the visual. Apparently the idea is to frighten off some demon called Nian, which is the word for 'year'. He is also scared of the colour red (clearly a bit of a wimp, as demons go) which is why they hang up red lanterns in doorways. Of course if you were paying attention during last year's Olympics coverage, you'll all know that red is also associated with good luck, so there are lots of red decorations about. Children are traditionally given red envelopes containing money at New Year, and people like to wear red clothes.
Anyway we were hoping there'd be a big public fireworks display tonight, but we got our man to phone the government (as you do!) and he tells us there isn't. These really only seem to happen in places like Hong Kong where the private use of fireworks and firecrackers is banned for safety reasons. I don't think they care much about safety in Harbin but they do like to avoid anything which requires organisation in advance or officials actually doing any work. It's a bit flippin' cold to hang around watching fireworks anyway, so I'm not that bothered.
The weirdest thing we've observed - speaking on a relative scale, this being a country of ultimate weirdness - is the fires on street corners. People traditionally light fires to make offerings to their ancestors: for example, if you think they might want a car, you write down 'car' on a piece of paper and burn it - a bit like a primitive form of online shopping. The thing is that they do this in the gutter, on the street corner. Over an open fire of burning coals. Right next to all the cars, buildings, trees and people. Like I say, safety not a big concern really.
But the main thing is that it's all about family. They have a big family meal on New Year's Eve, then they go out visiting relatives the next day, and on the second day they're supposed to visit the graves of their ancestors I think, but this is now considered bad luck. Anyway, in this day and age most people have to travel to see their families, hence the rail and air travel chaos. Kevin was in despair earlier in the week having failed to get a ticket for any train for his first visit home in a year. In the end he had to fly first class as that was all he could get. Time to learn the merits of forward planning, my boy.
It's also traditional to start the year afresh by cleaning your house thoroughly before New Year's Eve (oh damn, that's today - oh well, missed it!) but you mustn't clean at all during the first few days of the new year in case you sweep the good luck away (now it's starting to sound like my kind of holiday). You should also get a haircut and an entire new set of clothes, which probably explains the shopping frenzy last weekend. The supermarkets are full of really cute traditional mandarin-style outfits for kiddies. On the first day of the new year you're supposed to leave your windows open to let the good luck in, but in view of the climate I say: arrange these words to make a well-known phrase or saying: that, soldiers, game, sod.
However, in keeping with the 'out with the old' ethos, I thought I would share with you the following video which I actually filmed back in September when we first moved into our apartment but which I've been unable to upload here due to having an ADSL line with the diameter of a pinhead. It shows the fab but crazy Chineseness of the flat, including the kitchen light which we dubbed 'the disco jellyfish' (you'll recognise it when you see it) which sadly died this week and had to be replaced with a boring white light.
Also, since I had to enlist the help of a kind friend back home at Christmas (thanks John) to get any video clips onto this blog at all, you've also got more ceilidh dancing from our party back in December. Sorry for the tardiness in sharing these, but make the most of them as they may well be the last videos you ever see here. And it is also Burns Night, so a bit of Scottishness doesn't go amiss. Incidentally Peter got a letter from Lidl this week telling him they've extended their range of kilts. It's a good thing we're over here, I'd have had to hold him back.
Happy New Year! Again.
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