新年快乐！！Happy New Years!!

New Years Eve!!!

At around 5:30pm we all went out with Chen, Pong, and Pong's wife to a karaoke bar and buffet for dinner. We rented the room for 2 hours, and it was so much fun that the time flew by! Apparently my rendition of "Zombie" by the Cranberries received rave reviews. Nice, nice. As we left the karaoke bar, there were fireworks being lit all over the place. In fact, we'd been hearing fireworks going on the entire day since the morning during our Chinese class. We stayed to watch some people light them in the streets.
Fireworks vendors were posted so frequently along the streets, that they looked like an almost organic part of the city. Like they grew from the street grates like little red mushrooms with ballooned tent-like tops, selling fireworks to the roves of people that passed by in enthusiastic, nationalistic fervor. As silly as it may sound, there was this unique sense of pride and unity in the air, that I never felt in America. I think a lot of people on the trip agreed. It was like, people can say what they want about Communism, but Communism paired with China's rich history gives people a real understanding and sense of what they are to believe in, of what their country and its morals stand for. Subjective debates over democracy and the meanings of words like "freedom" don't really lie at the heart of Chinese nationality. I'm not saying which is worse or better, just that they are different and I believe they can and should coexist, changing with the times in their own unique ways.

The only way I can think of explaining it to myself, for my own understanding (and maybe any people out there who may think like I do, if anybody does - I don't know that's another story), but I think of it like adolescence versus old age. America and its senese of patriotism is like adolescence. There's youth, beauty, and promise wrapped up in its young history. However, there's also an idealism that is kind of surface, that hasn't had the centuries and centuries of time to develop a real identity of what it is in the world. That kind of stuff takes time. China is like an old person to me. It's not necessarily beautiful on the surface, and its seen a lot and done a lot that people might not be proud of, but it's also wise and steadfast. There's a stubborn nationality that isn't always right, but it's always present and more self-assured than most others. It has an understanding of what it stands for and what it believes in.

Anyways, off from that dazed tangent, and back to blowing things up. We bought fireworks with our professors and began lighting them on the huge lawn in front of the brand new library (it's about atleast 7 times as tall as the Morris Library, I would say...I think I heard someone say that it's 26 stories high, but if that's wrong please correct me) by our apartments. It was so much fun. Some pimps (not literally "pimps", just big spenders, mind you) got fireworks that were between 100-200 kuai. That is big money to be spending for second of entertainment. Others got smaller packs of little dynamite sticks that were like poppers you could light and then throw at people's feet to scare them. Some people got the mid-sized roman candles that could be directed to shoot at people or buildings or the sky (I think the sky was the purpose, but peope had other more devious plans, obviously). It was like one huge mischief night, allowed by the government, and it was crazier than any American holiday any of us had ever experienced. There was literally no end to where fireworks could be lit or when they could be lit or who could light them or who they had to warn to get out of the way. It was every man for himself. Basic rule of the game: if you see a man crouching, then getting up to run, you better run cause an explosion is probably happening in about 5 seconds.


Professor Chen was having so much fun with it, even though it was so cold outside I couldn't feel my feet, hands, or nose. He then told me that it had been over 20 years since he last celebrated New Years in China. Since the Spring Festival is an agricultural holiday, it falls at different times every year - mostly in the end of January or the beginning to mid February. For a while, it has fallen in the beginning of February so the other study abroads have missed experiencing it. It really made me feel special though, knowing we got to be the class he celebrated it with. Also, everyone in China watches CCTV from like 7-12 at night on New Years Eve. It is the Chinese govt's huge production where they get lots of performers for this big televised show, and it is a huge hit in China. Everywhere we went, on every tv I saw, it was turned to channel CCTV.

After our share of self-detinated explosions, we went to Houhai Lake, which is a big bar area. We should have known better than to go to the bars with lights that directly hugged the lake (huge tourist traps) but we went anyways. The place had overpriced drinks and weird music. Also, it was abnormally cold inside, despite their claim that the heat was on. Either way, we waited and hungout there a bit until 12 so that we could go out on the lake to see the fireworks. It was amazing. Literally the entire sky was lit with fireworks for over an hour, nonstop. In the streets fireworks were being lit outside of every store. I couldn't stand anywhere without little flecks of burnt cardboard or firework residue landing on my shoe or hitting my leg. Luckily, I escaped any serious bodily injury.

Casualties for the night:

1. Andy. A HUGE firework exploded in Andy's face! He's really lucky it didn't get any closer or it could have really hurt him, but it definitely caused him some temporary damage. His whole face was covered in so much ash, that even in the dark I could tell something was weird about his coloring. He kind of lost some of his hearing and his balance was definitely thrown off, as was his short term memory for a bit. Poor guy, but a good sport about it. Also, apparently it was such a big bang, that it set off all the car alarms around him, and the guy that set it off felt so bad that he let Andy light a few big ones himself.

2. Tingo. He got hit in the leg with a smaller firework while trying to climb the fence onto the huge, frozen Houhai Lake. The hit made him fall onto his arms and shoulder, causing him pain for the rest of the night.

3. Scott. His leg somehow fell through the ice, causing his pant leg to freeze and for his leg to acquire a huge gash in it from the scraping of the ice. Ouch.

After the fireworks, we walked across the lake to a weird bar that was playing music. The DJ was horrible, and although the dance floor had a pole, none of us were even mildly entertained by it for long. We left and had the hardest time finding a taxi home (well, actually we needed 3 taxis for the 9 of us). Eventually we all got home. Or rather, we all got to McDonalds where we were enjoying some late night munchies before bed. Classic.