We celebrated the Chinese new year (lunar new year, also called Spring festival) on Sunday evening and Monday. It involves a lot of fireworks. I asked students to help me describe the the fireworks to an American who has not been to China on the new year. Some student suggestions were "like fourth of july in every direction", "war zone" and "apocolyptic". You need to experience it for yourself if you like fireworks. Let me try to help you visualize it. First, know that large scale fireworks can be purchased easily by anybody at a pretty low price. Second, know that Chinese love fireworks and thus pretty much everybody purchases large scale fireworks. By large scale I mean the type that a typical town in america shoots off on the 4th of july. Third, know that we are in a densely populated city with no open space except the streets. So private citizens start setting off their fireworks at dusk and it builds in intensity until midnight at which point the city is a defeaning roar of fireworks going off in every block in the down town area. As far as the eye can see it is just fireworks. In addition people purchase long strings of fire crackers and these are going off more or less continously all over the place. By long strings I mean any where from 10 feet to 100 feet. The 100 footer strings go for about 10 or 15 minutes. There is usually several of these going off within easy earshot. This is all occuring in close quarters on the sidewalks next to tall buildings. So the echos are deafening. The fireworks sparks smash into the sides of the buildings if a fire work doesn't go very high. At midnight if you are on the street you will have a large amount of both incredulity and fear. Words and pictures cannot describe it. If you don't believe me ask one of the students on interim.
Oh, by the way, the fireworks and firecrackers start up again at six the next morning and continue off and on again throughout the next day. Our head pyro, Shawn, was heard to say "I love this country!!!"
In addition to the fireworks, we had two nice group dinners including art, games and competition along with reflecting on some of the final chapters from Crossing Culture by Patty Lane (a Christian author).
We put these signs on the hotel room doors of all our hotel rooms. It says "blessings" in Chinese.
Group dinner on new years eve with some special decorations in our private dining room.
Two chicken heads and a duck head
After dinner the class pyros (Brad, Taylor, head pyro Shawn, and Josh) got out their fireworks so we could watch them set them off. The big thing Shawn is holding is a unit of 16 large fireworks that go off in sequence with one fuse. They set them off a few feet outside the hotel front door per hotel permission. Of course these guys' fireworks were like childs play compared the the other fireworks going off. I saw probably 100 times this amount set off right outside my hotel window over the course of the evening... which was not even an important place to set off fireworks in Hangzhou. Other areas were crazier.
After the guys set off their fireworks (along with many other people setting of fireworks) at about 9:00 p.m. we walked to the lake which the town is built around and viewed the musical fountain.
Then some of us walked a short distance to McDonalds to buy ice cream. The cone lovers Krista, Jimelle and Whitney.
Those that prefer sundeas, Allison, Marissa and Elisabeth
Some shots of fireworks from my hotel window later in the evening.
Yes, this is what it looks like - They are going off directly above the building next door.
Oops, that big boomer got a little low. Oh well, no harm done
Another low boomer (this happens many dozens of times). Note the cars going by and there were people walking by unperturbed.
Image this in every direction for several hours with deafening roar. Note the smoke from the fire works. If you were outside your hair got full of falling debris
The next day (new years day) I took a walk with my wife Karen around the lake in the city. It is beautiful although the weather was very overcast and cool.
Karen in front of lake with some pagoda in backgroud. This area is an important Buddhist area in China.
New years evening we had a little class party. Here Prof Si is teaching us how to do calligraphy.
Jeff, Emily, Prof Si and Suzanna.
Monica, Jimelle and Jessye
Krista and Taylor
This is how you hold the brush, Lee
Brad trying to figure out which stroke is next. Taylor in the foreground.
Josh and Shawn
Josh's finished work. The Chinese characters mean Love and Blessings.
The CALVIN stamp we had made for the occasion.
Some finished product drying
We all had red scarves for the new year. The Chinese tradition is that the word "year" rhymes with a name of a bad dragon and you need to scare off this dragon at the beginning of each new year to avoid having a bad year. The bad dragon is scared of red and noise. So you wear red or put read on your door and you set off many loud fire works.
Jessye helping Suzanna adjust her scarf.
Danny and Andrew vamping, with Lance not vamping.
We then had a chop stick competition with two teams. They idea was for each team member to pick up a small item and carry it around the table. The quickest team won. It got pretty heated but thankfully ended in a draw and we avoided fisticuffs.
The ace, Prof Si
Lance working hard
Abby struggling, with Emily, Monica, Whitney and Elisabeth looking
Don't drop it Rachel.
