Journal: Chinese Not-Chinese New Year

On New Year's Eve I did two things that I've been wanting to do in China for a long time: drink baijiu (a strong alchohol made from grain), and sing karaoke. In that order, obviously. These two goals aren't difficult to achieve, but there's always been some reason or another why I've had to forego previous opportunities.

I was surprised to discover that China has a public holiday for New Year. I guess it's a case of good luck arriving early! There will be another, longer public holiday for Chinese New Year in a few weeks, and that is the time when people traditionally hang the character meaning "good luck" on their door. They often hang it upside-down, because in chinese "good luck upside-down" has the same pronunciation as "good luck arrives". Luckiest of all is my friend Li Qingtao, who unlike me got a holiday at Christmas because he works in a foreign-owned company.

Because of the two calendars, the term xinnian which literally means "new year" has become ambiguous. To differentiate, chunjie ("Spring Festival") is used for the Chinese New Year, which is the first day of Spring according to the lunar calendar, while yuandan which originally meant the first day of the first lunar month has now come to mean the first of January.

This New Year was not Chinese New Year, yet the way we celebrated it was so chinese that I can only describe it as a very chinese Not-Chinese New Year. In the afternoon, there was a show for all the teachers in the college, a "craptacular" in China blogger parlance. Each department put on a few performances, and I was involved too. For me and nine other teachers from the same office, this was the second time we had performed our dance, based on Irish folk dancing (think "Riverdance").

When this amateur tap-dancing troupe was being formed, at first I declined the invitation to join them. But then I reminded myself that the best way to learn about culture and language is to get involved. If the other teachers were brave enough to perform in front of hundreds of people after just a few practice sessions, then by golly so was I! In the end I think it was worth it. I learned a lot, and got to know my co-stars better. (Thanks to Fu Gang for taking these great photos!)

There were some other dances in the show, and lots of songs. When students perform, pop songs usually dominate, but in this show the songs were mainly folk songs or old Mao Zedong propaganda songs. That's probably more a reflection of their generation, rather than their loyalty to the Great Helmsman. Following the Cultural Revolution, songs praising Mao Zedong and the achievements of the socialism must have flooded the airwaves. At that time, even some folk songs were doctored. There is an old children's song that goes something like this:

A little sparrow, in speckled garb,
Comes here every year in Spring.
I asked the little sparrow, why do you come?
The little sparrow said: Spring here is the most beautiful.

But in a song book that I have, a second verse has been added:

Little sparrow, I tell you this:
It will be even more beautiful here next year.
We've built a big factory, and installed new machines.
We invite you to stay here a long, long time!

The performances were judged, and our department won first place. There were also several door prizes drawn by lottery. The college always gives such practical gifts! Remember my mini washing machine on Teachers' Day? In the photo below, those two big boxes on the stage were the first door prizes drawn, some sort of home appliance I think. And the girl in the green Mongolian-style dress is holding an electric kettle. Plus, every person who came that day was handed a novelty FM radio on the way out (mine's shaped like a lemon). I remember one time during the SARS period, the college organised a hill-climb to encourage teachers to keep fit, and everybody who participated received a set of oral hygiene products.

After the show, the fifteen or so teachers from my office went for dinner together. We had a private dining room booked in a nice hotel—we even had a private bathroom! Three of the other teachers wanted to drink baijiu, and I wanted a taste as well, so just when the waitress had almost finished pouring the contents of the small bottle into their three glasses, I asked if I could drink a little bit too. For that I received warm applause! It was strong stuff, but somewhat sweet and not too rough on the palate. Perhaps that's because it was a good brand. I think I made a small faux pas, however. Even though there were only a few mouthfuls in my glass, the others seemed a bit surprised when I finished before them. I think I should have drunk smaller sips so that I could join them in a final gan bei ("bottoms up").

After the meal, we pushed the table back and fired up the karaoke machine. I refrained from actually selecting songs, but when something that I recognised came on I couldn't help singing and sometimes a mic was pushed in front of me. So I sung and danced along to "Y.M.C.A" by the Village People since I knew the tune, and could read the lyrics from the screen. All the while, I wondered if anybody could actually miss the subtext in that song. The same applies to a chinese number I sung, a favourite of mine called "Don't Pick the Wildflowers by the Roadside". In this rather humourous song, a popular choice at weddings, a woman is saying goodbye to her sweetheart as he departs on a journey. The wildflower metaphor is pretty obvious, but when people ask me if I know what it means I like to play dumb just to see how they will explain it! When people got tired of singing, we tried to find some music which we could dance to. We were crying out for "disco", but when we had gone through the two or three tracks we could find we settled for cha cha instead. I watched the people who knew how to dance it, and tried to follow the steps. This caused several people to laugh at me.

Across the street from the hotel, somebody set off a whole lot of fireworks. I hope the people in those apartments had their windows closed! By now I'm used to the sound of fireworks and firecrackers at any time of the day or night. Big explosions also set off car alarms all over the place. Fireworks and firecrackers are used at festivals, weddings, funerals, and the opening of a new building or business. But you can't see (or hear) this custom everywhere in China. More and more cities are banning fireworks because they are noisy and dangerous.

We left the hotel at 10 o'clock, and I went home to sleep. There didn't seem any point waiting until midnight, since I had nobody to celebrate with. I was asleep well before 12 o'clock, but before I drifted off I heard the sound of Auld Lang Syne coming from somewhere.