China, 19 Feb 2007 --

…that’s my completely non-pinyin correct transliteration of Happy New Year in Chinese.  It’s now two days into the lunar year of the pig, and in these two days I can say I’ve learned one thing for sure:  the Chinese love their fireworks.  It’s like being in a war zone here…seriously.  Everywhere you turn at every hour of the day and night someone is setting off a roman candle, a bottle rocket, or most likely a 10 ft long string of chinese firecrackers.  The sound of a string of firecrackers echoing down a concrete alley is nothing short of deafening, and you get used to 30 second pauses in conversations…it’s just not possible to talk over the explosions.

I would imagine one of the reasons there’s so much heavy artillery being detonated is that it’s just so cheap!  A short string of firecrackers goes for 1 kwai (about 1/8 of a US dollar), and even a ‘money tree’ which sends 12 exploding balls high into the sky is only about 5 US dollars.  I should add, too, that these are the inflated prices I could get with my white face and my still developing bargaining skills.  Someone told me once that it was good luck to spend money during Chinese New Year’s, so I’m that much luckier I guess.

I set off a few of my own fireworks on Chinese New Year’s Eve, which I spent
in Yangshuo with an Aussie guy, two Danish girls, a Sweedish girl, and a German girl.  Meeting people while traveling is sort of like putting friendship development in fast forward since everyone is usually so starved for fluent western conversation and there’s just so much to talk about.  It was nice to have a group of friends, even if only for a few days, and we drank a good bit of cheap Chinese beer and baijio (some kind of rice whiskey that tastes much better than lao lao) to ring in the Year of the Pig.

I’ve moved on to Guilin now, and the short lived group of friends has disolved in various directions.  I spent today wandering the ‘Dragon’s Back Rice Terraces’ a few hours bus ride from here, which was really pretty beautiful.  For 50 kwai (about 5 USD) I got to view such rice terrace formations as ‘Two Dragons Fighting over Treasure’ and ‘Moon with Accompanying Seven Stars.’ I can’t say I’ve ever paid admission to a rice terrace before, but that’s just how things go in China.

Tomorrow, I suffer my first experience in ‘hard seat class’ on the Chinese train system.  I’ve heard mixed reviews.  It’s a short 8 hour trip up to Hengyang near the base of Heng Shan Mountain, which I plan to climb.  Shan (Mountain) is my new favorite Chinese word, and even the written character is easy…it pretty much looks like a mountain.

I’m adjusting to life in China, and things have definitely started looking up since the last post!  I wish you all ‘qui chi fa tai’ (Have Lots of Money) in the young year of the Pig.

Categories China