Wednesday, January 21, 2004
One Month, Two New Years
The fireworks burst all around, rising up between the apartment buildings and all around them, firecrackers booming into the earliest hours of the morning. The land where fireworks were invented has little fear of using them to full effect when the occasion calls for it, and for centuries, there has been no greater occasion than that of the Spring Festival.
For Chinese, the Spring Festival actually comes in the winter, but it signalizes that spring is coming. Moreover, according to the traditional Chinese Lunar calendar, the new year starts today. So Chinese first celebrate the international new year, wishing all their friends a happy new year, lots of good luck, all the best things in life, happiness everyday, and so on, and then about a month later, they wish everyone the same thing again for the more important Chinese version of the same holiday.
As I begin writing this, it’s already 1:30 in the morning, and the fireworks are still going. They’re much less than the cacophony of the midnight hour, but it’s not unlikely that if you were sitting here at this moment, looking out of any given window in a Chinese city, you might be able to see more fireworks too.
But maybe this is almost the last of it. Maybe Shanghai is ready to sleep now, and begin living the new year it has just celebrated. There are just a few drunken fireworks now, as if straggling home from a big party, totally unwilling to let it end for real, still singing on the road when everyone else has gone to sleep.
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