China Hope Live » Spring Festival (春节)

Those aren’t Chinese New Year’s fireworks; they’re “recreational munitions”

Joel 大江 — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:48:09 +0000

From Nankai Rob’s Chinese New Year 2012 post “Spring Festival Time. . .Lock and Load“:
“…parties are held on a scale so massive that Caligula would have nodded in approval, and enough recreational munitions are set off to make the Battle of Waterloo feel like a suburban bar mitzvah. You’ll notice my careful word choice here: “recreational munitions” rather than “fireworks.” “Fireworks” as a term carries with it more celebratory, even innocent connotations, but you can’t define Chinese celebratory fireworks by the intent behind them. Certainly they’re set off with great excitement and joy, but you can, after all, also lob a grenade into a dumpster with great excitement and joy, and most of what is being set off these days qualifies for inclusion in the dumpster-grenade category. So: recreational munitions.”

For more about the genuinely stunning Chinese New Year fireworks phenomenon with photos and video, see:

Happy Chinese New Year!

Happy Lantern Festival 2011 from Tianjin, China!

Joel 大江 — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 03:20:45 +0000

Last night was The Lantern Festival 元宵节, the final night of Spring Festival 春节 and that means the last night of fireworks(!), so this morning it’s finally all quiet on the eastern front.

We joined the happy crowds last night on Tianjin’s frozen Haihe river 海河 near Ancient Culture Street 古文化街 and launched a couple “wish lanterns” 许愿灯 (usually called 孔明灯) — the candle-powered sky lanterns you’ve probably seen pictures of.

These pictures aren’t great, but it was actually a pretty fun scene. Hundreds, maybe thousands of lanterns were floating around, fireworks up and down the river, lots of people having fun, etc.

Ok, the pictures really aren’t that great, but all those little dots in the sky are lanterns. It looked cool, I promise. Just look at the photos and use your imagination.

You can actually see it better in the video clip below.

Some of the flaming lanterns got stuck in trees, and every so often one would come hurtling down to the ice in a blazing arc of glory. We even launched a couple:

These were the only lanterns to be found at Tianjin’s Ancient Culture Street 古文化街，which was a bit of a disappointment considering it was the LANTERN Festival, but it was still fun to launch fire hazards into the night sky from down on the river. We’ll definitely do this again next time we get the chance!

You can browse the rest of our Spring Festival fun here.

Happy Chūwǔ tù you! Time to curse your enemies with Chinese voodoo!

Joel 大江 — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 11:34:56 +0000

If you’re wondering why it sounds like your Chinese city is under attack again, a mere five days after the Chinese New Year bombardment, it’s because today is 初五, the 5th day of Spring Festival and the day traditionally reserved for getting together with family and cursing your current and future enemies. In other words, what you’re hearing tonight is Chinese firecracker voodoo.

There’re also voodoo dumplings, among other preemptive enemy cursing traditions, which you can read about here:

Happy Chūwǔ 兔 you!

Happy Chinese New Year “兔” You! Here’s your sample CNY text greetings for 2011

Joel 大江 — Thu, 03 Feb 2011 16:09:28 +0000

Chinese are sending literally billions of Chinese New Year greeting text messages this year as a way to 拜年, meaning pay New Year’s respects to one another. They’re often in the form of cute little poems and word-plays. Last year was tiger-themed, of course (I pity the fú!), and this year it’s rabbits. Here’s one from one of my students:

快乐“兔”you，幸福“兔”you，健康“兔”you，平安“兔”you，Lǐ Yǎnán 恭祝您及家人健康幸福，兔年大吉，万事如意，合家欢乐！

Happy “rabbit”* you, blessing “rabbit” you, health “rabbit” you, peace “rabbit” you, Li Yanan wishes you and family health and happiness, an extremely auspicious rabbit year, that all matters go according to your desires, a joyous household!

*Rabbit (兔) in Chinese is pronounced “tù”, which sounds like “to” in English, so the message actually says “health to you”, etc.

Here’s another one that I can’t translate (don’t be too shy to help me out in the comments!). It arranges some idioms sequentially 1 through 10; the first character of each expression is a number:

Lù Yán 给您及您的家人拜年！祝愿大家2011年一帆风顺，二龙腾飞，三羊开泰，四季平安，五福临门，六六大顺，七星高照，八方来财，九九同心，十全十美。新年快乐！ Happy New Year!

Lu Yan gives you and your family a New Year’s greeting! Wish everyone in 2011 favourable winds, rapid advancement, the auspiciousness of three sheep*, four seasons of peace, the Five Blessings arrive at your door, sixty-six** great smoothnesses, the Seven Stars’ brilliance, riches from all Eight directions, ninety-nine*** cooperativeness, complete and beautiful.

* I thought that there must be a word play here, but I asked two local friends and all they can guess is that it refers to the blessing one would receive in ancient times for sacrificing sheep.
** Six (六) sounds like the first part part of the word for smoothly/without a hitch (顺利).
*** Nine (九) sounds the same as 久 (a long duration of time), and nine-nine (九九) is often used to symbolize “forever” because 久久 means a very long time. One Chinese friend of ours proposed to his girlfriend with 99 roses, for example.

If I get any more interesting ones, I’ll add them here. You can see last year’s Dr. Seuss-esque tiger year text here.

Happy Rabbits! Chinese New Year 2011 fireworks from Tianjin, China!

Joel 大江 — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 16:57:43 +0000

What better way to celebrate than by blowing the place up? This is Tianjin city, China, at midnight on Chinese New Year’s Eve. We’re staying at friends’ house on the edge of the city, and this is the view from the third floor roof at midnight, looking north toward the city.

The photo and video don’t do it justice; what you see here is only about 1/10 of the cityscape that was exploding, but it’s still worth a look. The video clip (YouTube, sorry) gives you a better idea:

Happy Rabbit Year! 兔年快乐！See more about Spring Festival and Chinese New Year here.

Other fireworks posts:

Happy Chinese New Year to you, too, Mr. taxi shifu!

Joel 大江 — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:40:00 +0000

Negative news about China circulates quickly and often and colours people’s perceptions of China and Chinese people, so when something great happens I want to share it.

Since Spring Festival is a Chinese family holiday, it’s not the ideal time to do much with your Chinese friends as most of them are busy. Because of that and the unbelievable amount of fireworks (and car alarms) that go on for several days, especially in Tianjin, many foreigners find ways to “escape” during Chinese New Year’s Eve. Our NGO and many others plan their annual conferences during this time. We know a Dutch family who’s gone to Thailand for Spring Festival this year, and they invited us to house-sit while they’re gone. They have an actual Western-style house (rare in China!) on the edge of the city where it’s quiet (even rarer!), and we were more than willing to take them up on their offer.

Four or five nights away with a toddler means we had to pack out a lot of stuff, and it being over Chinese New Year’s means we also had to pack out food (lots of stores will be closed), so we crammed a lot of stuff into a taxi, including a borrowed $600 camera (our old camera finally died, and we’d borrowed a friend’s extra camera while waiting for another friend to bring one we ordered to her American address while she was in the States seeing family). The driver had to pull out half our stuff and rearrange, so things were moved around and stuffed places.

When we arrived we unloaded everything into a pile, said thanks, and he drove off. Almost right away we realized the camera wasn’t there. I ran to the entrance of the housing complex hoping to catch him, but he was gone. We called our friend to tell her we’d lost her really expensive camera for no good reason, and that we’d replace it. We’re not usually so irresponsible, and we felt horrible about it; we were supposed to be kicking off the beginning of a relaxing, romantic vacation but it was like a cloud had dropped on us. Being out several hundred dollars didn’t add to the mood either.

Petty theft goes up before Spring Festival because people are spending lots of money and, so our local friends tell us, the legions of migrant workers who are preparing to make their torturous train ride home are more apt to make a little extra money by any means that presents itself. They also sometimes have to fight for their wages from bosses who try to cheat them; it’s not too uncommon to see the occasional protests by migrant workers outside a constructions site, for example, during the lead-up to Spring Festival. Anyway, this didn’t even really count as theft, and we had no illusions that we’d ever see that camera again.

The next day, just a few minutes ago, I heard a car pull up but assumed it was the neighbours (the house is actually a duplex). Lilia was upstairs not sleeping, and the doorbell rang. No way, I thought, and went to open the door. There was the driver(!), opening the trunk and explaining how he’d not seen it yesterday because it was stuffed in the back (taxi drivers usually have lots of their own stuff in the trunks). I thanked him profusely and gave him some money, and he said think of it as him 拜年-ing us. 拜年 means sending someone a New Year’s greeting or paying them a New Year’s visit, both of which are customary during Spring Festival. Chinese will send billions, literally, of New Year’s text messages as a means of 拜年-ing each other，and in the days following New Year’s Day they will go 拜年 relatives and friends by visiting their homes.

Anyway, we’re very thankful today for a kind-hearted, exceptionally honest Chinese taxi driver. Happy Chinese New Year to him, and everyone else, too!

Related Stuff:

Happy “Little New Year”!

Joel 大江 — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 13:58:36 +0000

Fireworks stands are on the corner and street vendors are selling auspicious red bunny panties — it can only mean one thing: Chinese New Year is coming!

Wednesday is 小年 (“little year”), when you’re supposed to make offerings to the Kitchen God (灶王爷), especially sweet, sticky offerings, so that his mouth will be glued shut and he won’t be able to report any of your family’s bad doings to the Jade Emperor in Heaven (or so that he’ll only report sweet things, or as a bribe to butter him up and make him more predisposed to give a good report).

The Kitchen God watches over the family fortunes. He leaves for Heaven every year on the 23rd day of the 12th month in the Chinese lunar calendar to report on the family and returns a week later, at which time the family will welcome him back with a fresh picture on the wall.

You can read about the legend behind the Chinese New Year Kitchen God traditions here, here and here (three parts), and see more about the history of “Little New Year” and its traditions and rituals here.

P.S. – Photos of lucky red bunny panties are on the way. With the tiger panties from last year I’ll have the whole Chinese zodiac in underwear form by 2021!

Taking a “hard sleeper” train in China

Joel 大江 — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 02:01:52 +0000

Over Spring Festival my parents and I took a “hard sleeper” (硬卧) train for the first time. After all the stories I’d heard I was expecting the worst, especially since it was 春运，the Spring Festival travel season when public transportation gets beyond maxed out. It wasn’t really all that bad, though I can easily imagine how it could be really bad, depending on your fellow passengers. Definitely wouldn’t want to do it with a baby. The hardest thing for us this time was getting tickets in the first place, which required some serious string-pulling by a friend of a friend — I’m afraid to ask how he got them. But if you like to chat/practice Chinese, and you bring snacks (that you can share), a book, a cup and some instant coffee, a hard sleeper doesn’t have to be a brutal experience, at least going from our recent first trip.

I put a bunch of photos into a gallery, along with details about our ride in the captions. If a hard sleeper train ride is in your near or potential future, the photo gallery will give you a good idea of what to expect, snogging couples and all. Haha, poor mom!

Click a photo to go to the hard sleeper gallery.

New Photo Gallery: Ditan Park Temple Fair

Joel 大江 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 05:16:29 +0000

My folks came to see us during Spring Festival and we spent a couple days in Beijing. Ditan Park has Beijing’s biggest Spring Festival Temple Fair and it barely contains an unbelievable amount of people, noise and colour. We had a blast, though I wouldn’t recommend it for those who easily suffer from sensory overload! Click the link or the photos below to go to the photo gallery.

Beijing’s Ditan Park Temple Fair 地坛庙会 – 2010 Feb. 20

[Photo Gallery:] Tiananmen & The Forbidden City 天安门广场和故宫

Joel 大江 — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:51:22 +0000

Tiananmen Square (天安门广场 tiānānmen guǎnchǎng) and the Forbidden City (a.k.a. the Palace Museum a.k.a. 故宫 gùgōng) during Spring Festival.

Captions are under each photo. You can leave comments on this page at the bottom. (For an interesting historical overview of slogans on the Gate of Heavenly Peace, see here.)

2010 Feb 21