Spring Festival in Beijing

Spring Festival (Chinese New Year to you and I) is the biggest and most important festival / holiday of the year in China. For some Chinese people it’s their one trip “home” in the year, so this time of year the entirety of China is on the move. The nation went on the move in the first week of February, but Lantern Festival (Feb 18^th) sort of marks the end of the festivities, so Beijing is starting to get back to itself. Unfortunately, I haven’t done any travelling over the festive period. On one hand, there are far worse places to spend Spring Festival than Beijing and actually it was good to avoid the crammed trains and planes and all the stressed, sweaty people that go with mass migration. On the other hand, it seems like everyone around me is travelling, and I’m going nowhere fast.  Not home, not travelling, not even leaving Beijing at the moment! Thinking positively though, I saw a different side of Beijing too, and got to do some of the touristy stuff that I’ve missed around the city.

China is famous for fireworks. I know this, you know this; what I hadn’t realised is just how prolific they are. The entire week was like living in a fairytale warzone, bangs and glitter all over the city. Official statistics are that over Spring Festival there were 2 deaths, 388 injuries and 194 fires from fireworks – and that’s just the reported ones in Beijing alone! I’m pleased to report that I suffered nothing worse than surprise from a cracker falling on my nose, though a former roommate of mine wrote off a down jacket from cinder burns. For New Year itself there wasn’t an official firework display as we’d have it back home, anyone and everyone can buy them and set them off pretty much anywhere, so that’s what happens! The one that exploded down the drain was quite entertaining... At New Year (2^nd Feb) the hostel set some off at midnight – we all stood round, watched them explode and dodged the fallout of the crackers. All you really have to do to see fireworks this time of year though is look out the window. The hostel was busier for Spring Festival than I saw it at actual New Year and Christmas (mostly because everywhere was closed and backpackers have to have somewhere to party!) so it was a really fun atmosphere, and the fireworks literally just stopped going off yesterday.

For New Year’s Day (Feb 3^rd) we went to Chaoyang Park International Carnival. I can’t think what I was expecting (except for a throng of people, but it’s China – that’s a given) but the number of end of the pier sideshow “hook-a-duck” style games and thousands of stalls selling really weird tacky stuff wasn’t precisely it. It was a fun day though – Claire and I went with four guys from the hostel and we spent the best part of the day wandering around, trying to win stuff and sampling random food from the stalls. I could’ve done some jugglers or acrobats… lanterns, dragon dances – anything a bit more stereotypically ‘traditional Chinese’ than inflatable mallets, but heyho. 

The day after, in search of something a little more ‘cultural’ Claire and I went to Dongyue Daoist temple fair about a twenty minute stroll south of the Workers Stadium. 

Daoism is cool. It’s Buddhism with fire and brimstone – around the edges of the temple were rooms with statues illustrating exactly what will happen to you in ever department of Hell. ‘Department’ of Hell no less – you have to love how insidious bureaucracy is in every facet of Chinese life, both now and afterwards!! My personal favourite was the room with one poor guy having his tongue cut out by an astonishingly red demon and another guy whose intestines were just falling out of his mid-section. Nice. The temple fair was a funny combination of devotion – people lighting incense and reflecting quietly – and travelling show. We caught the second half of a puppet show, missed some acrobatics and were invited to try and win ourselves some manky looking giant cuddly toys. There were loads of souvenir stalls too; choice examples were posed cockroaches in glass jars, nodding dog style plasticine models of your face, and anything and everything with a rabbit theme. FYI, it’s now the Year of the Rabbit.

After that, we decided we’d had enough of culture for a few days, so the next thing of note I saw/did was go to the Temple of Heaven on the last day before going back to work. It was good to get out into some greenery for once – Temple of Heaven, apart from the temple, is a huge park all filled with cyprus trees. It was surprisingly peaceful, even filled with tourists. It just made me realised how much I need the outdoors in my life! Chinese people and parks have a wonderful relationship that I think I’ll muse on at a later stage, but the best thing about my visit to Temple of Heaven was just wandering round outside. I didn’t bother going into the temple itself – people watching is way more interesting! I think the best bit was chatting with a tiny old Chinese man who was writing English riddles on the ground in water.

I’m back to the grindstone now (as you can probably tell from how far away from events this was posted!!) – more to come as soon as I can! 

Home Sweet Hostel

XinNian Kuaile! Happy Chinese New Year! I’ve successfully managed to jump straight from actual New Year to Chinese New Year without a single blog post, so since it is Spring Festival, my office is closed and it’s time and past to update.

So, what have I been doing in January? Well, I moved to Beijing for my new job and since then I’ve been working. Working, working, partying, working a bit more then wondering why I get to Spring Festival ready to collapse! I haven’t found an apartment yet (mostly because I haven’t had much time to look – I work long days) so I’m living in the SanLiTun Youth Hostel. The last time I lived in a hostel was in 2006 the summer I was volunteering in South Africa. It was fun back then and it’s fun now. The hostel is really friendly, reasonably comfortable, reasonably cheap and well placed for walking to the subway for work and the best bar street in Beijing for play. I also know the menu backwards and upside-down by this point. The downsides of living here are the lack of privacy – I’m in a six bed dorm room, my diet is the opposite of healthy, and I’ve thrown myself into a work hard, play hard lifestyle which is not exactly sustainable for my body, soul or wallet. It’s damn good fun though.

Sanlitun Youth Hostel seems to be the unofficial home of every TTC or i-to-i teaching intern in China, both past and present. I’ve seen people come through from my internship; I’ve made friends with someone from the internship before mine who lives here too (Claire, my doppelganger – she’s English, redheaded and loves books too) and a whole load of new recruits from the next internship have been staying here for Chinese New Year. They’ve been eagerly tapping Claire and me for information…we should’ve charged 10yuan a head and put on a lecture!! Ah well, hindsight eh. Actually, ever other person here is a teacher and from the ones who aren’t, most have done some at some point. Everyone else is just travelling. Lucky buggers.

It’s a funny cycle really – there are a few of us who are more or less long-term residents here – and everyone else is passing through. There are upsides and downsides to this. I’ve met loads and loads of really cool people from all over the world, but they leave and I get a completely new friendship group every ten days or so. It’s sad in a way, but liberating in others; the problem comes when I’m hanging out with my friends who do stick around… they’re around for all my adventures and, just like brothers, they take great delight in Remembering Things. Oh well. What happens in Beijing…

Speaking of people, the hostel staff are all really cool. I’ve made friends with Rui Rui (Jane) who teaches me a bit of Chinese every so often, makes a damn good Tequila Sunrise and we gossip about the current crop of guys in the hostel. Rong, Candy and Alice are also nice, but I don’t have as much chat with them. The cleaning ladies I know by sight and to say nihao too – they’ve perfected the art of the dirty look when I stumble along to the bathroom  after a night out, but when I was poorly a couple of weeks ago they were really nice to me. There’s a dog and a cat and a rabbit that live here too. The dog is a spoiled fluffy white footstool, but relatively cute despite that. The staff absolutely love him but as he has a thing for the socks of backpackers we (the residents) are on our guard around him. The rabbit is a bit mean and the cat seems to have disappeared.

It’s not as hard as you might imagine, living in a hostel, although I do rather miss privacy and choice over whether my bedroom window is open or closed. Now I’ve moved into a room with Claire, it’s even more fun and, I assume, just like having a college roommate except on a larger scale. Actually, the hardest thing (except for getting early nights – they don’t exist) is being around people who are travelling. I have a huge green eyed monster on my shoulder all day (no, not Claire!) from work and all the cool things there are to do and see in China, then I come home and people are heading off to or coming from everywhere I want to go. Upside I’m getting so many ideas for when I do get the chance to travel, downside I do feel a bit stuck here in Beijing.

Once the website I work for is launched, I’m hoping to have time and money for weekend trips out of Beijing, and then I can actually put my eponymous blue dress/backpack on and tell you about travelling around China. For the moment, I’m limited to Beijing and my next offering will be the story of Chinese New Year 2011, what we did and what was cool…