New Year's Eve

I woke up at the crack of dawn this morning to the sound of China exploding. It was still dark out, and people across the country were already up and launching a full-scale firecracker assault on the last few hours of the old year, chasing out the year of the tiger and welcoming in the year of the rabbit. Firecrackers blasted on all sides of our apartment, ricocheting and echoing off the concrete, at times alarmingly close. It never stopped. All day, Xuzhou hummed steadily with the constant rumble of faraway firecrackers, punctuated by sudden ear-splitting blasts from just next door or around the corner. It sounded like a war zone. Enough firecrackers and fireworks have been detonated here today to collapse several large buildings.

I dozed as long as I could through the noise, dreaming fitfully of earthquakes and guerrilla warfare, until Benson’s parents came in and told us we had to get up and get ready to go out. We threw on some clothes and slurped down a bowl of Benson’s mom’s freshly made, super tasty dumplings (filled with chives, egg, sweet potato noodles and ginger) and then the six of us squeezed into Benson’s cousin’s car to go meet up with the rest of the family at his uncle’s house in the countryside.

We arrived at a maze of simple concrete one- and two-storey homes and picked our way through the alleys, stopping a few times to greet old friends and neighbours who were out for walks or sitting out in their doorways. Arriving at a pair large metal double doors decorated with the ubiquitous red and gold paper character (?) on it, we stepped through and into a traditional Chinese courtyard home. We were greeted in the courtyard by Benson’s grandmother and several uncles and aunts, along with a hardy little Pekingese and a very agitated husky. A doorway on the right led to the kitchen, where a couple of the aunts were already preparing an elaborate lunch, and on the left a sun-drenched porch lay before the front door to the main house. We went inside, made introductions with the rest of the family and sat around for a bit chatting and eating sunflower seeds. Not long after, everyone got up and started getting ready to leave. We gathered, from their heavily Xuzhou-accented explanation, that we were going on a walk somewhere. Benson’s mother carried a few dumplings from breakfast in a plastic bag, and his father was carrying another bag that bulged with little slips of yellow paper.

We followed a narrow path out of the concrete village and into the dusty, brush-covered hills of the countryside. The sound of firecrackers never faded, echoing off the hills in the distance. After a few minutes, I noticed a cemetery ahead, and realized the family was going to pay respects to their ancestors. We bypassed a long stretch of neatly arranged headstones and wandered through a series of unmarked mounds of earth, the ground littered with white paper flowers, alcohol bottles, unsmoked cigarettes, dumplings and the scorched bits of red paper left by firecrackers, stopping eventually at one of the mounds. We all gathered around as Benson’s mother made a large pile of yellow paper, which represents money, and lit it on fire, sending it to the ancestors who’ve moved on to the afterlife. Everyone took turns kowtowing three times to the mound, and then they carefully stamped out the fire, moved on to another mound just behind us and repeated the ceremony. Leaving a couple of dumplings at each mound, we turned around and walked back.

Back at the house, we filled every piece of furniture in the living room and crowded around a little coffee table crowded with plates of fish, meat and veggies. We again found ourselves lacking a corkscrew for the wine, and I again was obliged to demonstrate my expertise at improvisational wine-bottle-opening. This time I used a chopstick. But it was all in vain, as the wine turned out to be completely undrinkable. Chinese wine, at prices as low as two or three dollars a bottle, seems to be such a great bargain until you actually drink it. Once in a while you find something that might be suitable for sangria or mulling, but most of them I wouldn’t drink if I were paid.

Anyway, after lunch we all sat around a while longer and then headed back to Benson’s house, where we rested up and prepared to conquer a huge New Year’s dinner of more fish, meat and veggies, washed down with bowls of Tsingtao. Benson’s mom was the only one brave enough to get into the baijiu (白酒, bái jiǔ, the excessively strong and unappetizing national booze). Then we all sat down on Benson’s parents’ bed to watch the annual New Year’s program on TV while firecrackers and fireworks continued to roar like gunfire around us until late into the night.

Chinese lesson of the day:
新年快乐
xīn nián kuài lè
Happy New Year!