New Year’s Eve

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Tomorrow the Year of the Tiger begins. Today is New Year’s Eve in China, the biggest holiday of the Chinese calendar.

The fireworks begin early in the day, the reverberations setting off car alarms in the parking lot.

I am making brownies to take to the Zhous. We also have the Jack Daniels and a large box of very good chocolates. We’ve bought gold paper and red gift bags because we’ve read that’s appropriate for New Year.

Yesterday I purchased an inexpensive red and gold jacket so I’d look festive for tonight.

At 3:40 they pick us up. This time Mr. Zhou is driving, a large Toyota SUV. His brother-in-law is with him and Gail. We’re going to visit some construction sites and Zhou’s offices to set off firecrackers to scare away last year’s ghosts. This is a Chinese tradition, and as we move through Kaifaqu we can see it’s going on everywhere.

Gail has said Zhou is a very successful businessman and our journey today tells us that he is indeed. Our first stop is a huge hole in the ground hundreds of feet wide, the site of a new building which Zhou is overseeing. At this and every stop along the way today Zhou’s associates (read subordinates) meet him at the site and place and set off the fireworks.

In addition to two other construction sites, we stop at his temporary office in Kaifaqu and later at his very impressive permanent office in Dalian. Ghosts are expelled at each stop.

Mr. Zhou regards his work as exciting; he works long hours and is absorbed in it. Gail, not so much.

We are impressed and understand how exciting it must be to be a part of China’s booming economy today.

Zhou also has high hopes for his country; he can see the day, he says, when China will be rid of pollution and the city’s air will be clean again. Zhou also has a high regard for building in the U.S. He says buildings there are much better, more beautiful. However, this might be typical Chinese modesty, claiming that other’s things are better.

Once we’ve finished ghost-busting we drive to the apartment complex where Gail and Zhou live, and Zhou’s mother does as well. Her home is where we’re eating dinner tonight. The apartment is small, Gail warns. Their own apartment, on the other side of the complex, is three times as large.

The apartment is small, but it’s clean and bright and very pleasant. Zhou’s mother suffers from dementia, and Gail’s sister-in-law cares for her. Tonight, however, she will be gone. A cousin, a young man, has cooked the food, and it’s beautifully presented.

Sheri’s cousin, just a year older, is here and she talks to us in very good English, though she apologizes for not speaking English well. She wants a photo with me. We take several photos, including one of me with Zhou’s mother.

Dinner is a banquet. On the coffee table there is fruit (delicious white peaches and pears), as well as candy and nuts.

Gail puts the finishing touches on the meal when the rest of the family leaves. It will be just Zhou’s mother, us and the Zhous for dinner. Gail puts dumplings in water to cook for a few minutes. There must be fifty of them and she has another batch, filled with something else, after this one’s finished.

It’s impossible to eat everything at a Chinese meal. We have crabs, clams, shrimp, fish, two kinds of dumplings, rice, a dish of pork fat with seasonings, and peaches.
We are indeed honored guests. Zhou presents the wine (really whiskey). It is Moutai, China’s official state liquor, served at state dinners and at Chinese embassies everywhere in the world.

I’m a heretic-it’s colorless, very powerful, and hot to my taste. But I’m hardly a connoisseur.

Tonight is a very big night, with the burning of paper for family members who have died (money in the afterlife). At midnight, every family will set off fireworks. Zhou has brought three large boxes to his mother’s to set them off. She enjoys them.

The Zhous drive us home after dinner. They cannot be gone long since Zhou’s mother cannot be left alone.

On the way back it’s obvious some people are getting a head start. Firecrackers are going off everywhere and we pass several fireworks displays that rival that of most small cities in the U.S. on July 4th.

At the apartment the celebration is gearing up. We see three of the big displays, then there are three on each side of the apartment. We keep moving back and forth between the kitchen, the balcony and the bedroom, trying to see them all at once.
This goes on for another three hours, increasing in intensity and frequency. We call Sarah to let her hear it, and try to call Mary but get her recording. Bernie takes what must amount to an hour of movies.

It’s spectacular and it’s going on all over China. I keep wondering what China must look like now from a satellite.

Gail told us not to go to bed before midnight because we’d be awakened by the noise. She said it would sound like a war. It does.

Amazing. We’re glad we’re here for New Year’s Eve.