Ringing in 4704 - the Year of the Pig

Last Saturday, the 17^th, Chinese around the world celebrated the Lunar New Year. My only experience of Lunar New Year celebrations up until now have come from the Chinese snacks that Jenna Wong’s mom brought in once a year back at P.S. 178 and enjoying a meal of dumplings and bubble tea courtesy of the Harvard Chinese Students’ Association. However, I now realize that Chinese New Year (Spring Festival as it is referred to here) is the Chinese holiday. This comes after living through what can best be described as a collective cultural explosion during this past week. Forget National Day or the May 1^st holiday, which have only been celebrated for a few decades. The Chinese have been ringing in the Lunar New Year for millennia (take that Dick Clark), and the festivities are grander than those of any other celebration on earth. Imagine everything but the most essential transportation and security services shutting down; hundreds of millions of travelers flooding planes and trains to make it home for the holidays; fireworks going off on every street corner for days leading up to and following New Year’s, and you’ll only begin to appreciate the sheers scale of the celebrations.

I had a very international Chinese New Year’s Eve, passing the few before and after midnight with a Russian classmate and his friends in a Korean restaurant. There’s no single fireworks display in Beijing for Spring Festival. Instead families set off their own in parks and courtyards throughout the city. At midnight on the 16^th, all we could hear was the deafening pop, pop, pop of fireworks all around us, as flashes of light illuminated the fog off into the distance. I often complain about the cold, austere streets of Beijing, devoid of personality and losing the spirited street-life that lend Chinese cities their character. During Spring Festival, the people take back the streets, putting on a series of massive, week-long street fairs. Lots of greasy street food, carnival games, and vendors. It also hasn’t hurt that this year’s celebration coincides with the best weather Beijing has seen since October. Spring Festival has been a nice break from work and a chance to have fun with friends and family before heading back to school. However, it’s also reintroduced me to some of the things I loved about Beijing, but have lost touch with over half year I’ve been living here.