So we (and by “we” I mostly mean my 1.4 billion neighbors) recently celebrated Chinese New Year, which is far, far too big a deal for one night -- try most of the month of February. The amount of fireworks was something I never could have believed or imagined; it made the 4th of July seem like a 3-year-old with a wet pea-shooter. Although there were ebbs and flows, it went on basically 24/7, and on peak days like the 2nd, the 7th, and the 17th, it was stunning, war-zone level crazy. Explosions would start at 5 a.m,. and last until 4:58 a.m. the next day. People believe that to have wealth and fortune in the coming year, they basically have to blow up their houses. I don’t quite get it. Imagine if every man, woman and child in the city where you live decided to blow off a brick of M-80’s every time they stood up or sat down, for two weeks straight -- yeah, roughly like that. I realize you will think I'm exaggerating; if anything, I’m understating it, because me not know words to describe it. In the mornings we would see teams of street-sweepers piling up gigantic, swimming pool-sized mountains of red fireworks paper. At times we’d hear dozens, sometimes even hundreds of explosions, large and small, every minute, from every direction.
Thank GOD, the boys actually dealt with the noise just fine for the most part, aside from a few night wakings. Allison hit on the brilliant idea of telling them the fireworks were good luck, a happy sound, and every time we’d hear loud ones during the day we’d all say “Happy New Year!” cheerfully, Kai and even Keegan included, in his way. We tried to make a game of it, and miraculously, it worked, this transparent scam actually worked. Please excuse my cultural ignorance, but to the people of China I would like to say -- good God y’all, what are you thinking? The money that must go into this . . . wow, just wow. And in the name of bringing wealth and good fortune, too! Well, when you already own America, what else do you need to do with your cash, I guess? But as I believe I previously mentioned, WOW.
On the plus side, the holiday also brings sweet, sweet extra vacation time to everyone except stay-at-home dads (it’s one of the two annual “Golden Weeks” in China), which means Allison and the boys and I got to go around doing fun, touristy things for a week, things we’ve been meaning to do, like putting the kids in a laundry basket and dragging them all over the house, you know, stuff like that. One morning we headed to the Flower, Bird, Fish and Insect Market to check out the crickets and other assorted critters. Crickets are raised for fun, profit, and for the noble sport of cricket-fighting in many countries throughout Asia, and there are dozens of old guys in the market just hanging out with their crickets, talking cricket with their cricket cronies. Kai was curious to look at the crickets in their little glass jars or bamboo cases, but both he and Keegan found the birds, turtles, and especially the bunnies more appealing, really. (Yeah, I know, bunnies don’t quite fit into the market’s stated mission, but this is the Year of the Rabbit, so bunnies sell. The bilingual hipsters are all saying “ Happy Tu Year,” because “tu” is “rabbit” in Mandarin.)
Another day we went to Qibao, a traditional village that used to be miles from Shanghai, but is now on the outskirts of the megalopolis, still retaining its village identity. Well, except that it draws in jillions of tourists who outnumber the villagers. Most of them are Shanghai-ren, city people who think the village is "ke ai," cute, and some are people from other provinces who miss their own villages. Pretty much none of them are Westerners, except for us, on the day we went, anyway. That always means we become part of the tourist experience for a sizable chunk of the crowd, who head home with snaps and videos of Kai and Keegan climbing on rock sculptures or begging us to try food that might be candy, or maybe larvae, we don’t know. But hey, fair’s fair, we’ve got pictures of them, too. This place was really fun -- weird, overcrowded, but really fun, with some of the more bizarre snack items I’ve seen, even for China (I accidentally bought some gooey squid balls), and a cricket museum, and plenty of randomness, like an old couple making puffed rice in a blast furnace (we bought some for 3 Yuan, 50 cents, and the boys loved it so much we’re still finding it in the couch). We checked out the surprisingly lovely buddhist/confucian temple, too.
The biggest score of the holiday was our visit to the China Pavilion, a building so spectacularly popular that, though slated to close at the end of the Shanghai Expo on October 31st of last year, it has been kept open through Spring in the interests of national pride and the almighty Yuan. It looks like an upside-down pyramid (or ziggurat, really, for you Mesopotamian anthropologists out there), and it features a 180-degree-screen movie promo for modern China; an enormous moving mural of the country’s history; and an amusement-park-style train ride that’s part It’s a Small World, part propaganda, part 8th Grade Science Fair in Muncie, Indiana, and all Shanghai. It was terrific to be able to see the Pavilion, which we missed on our one visit to the Expo because otherwise it would have been the only thing we could have seen. However, our absolute favorite thing about visiting the Pavilion is that we didn’t have to wait in line. Maybe that just shows you how petty we are, but it will also give you some sense of what a major coup it is to dodge a queue like this, in the most populous city in the most populous nation on earth. And we didn’t just cut in at the front, either! It was legit. Our magical secret? The baby stroller. The staff ushered us into the special green lane reserved for party chairmen, widows of revolutionary martyrs, visiting popes, and Kai and Keegan. That’s why, in the pictures, you see the unfathomable mob of people on the left, and the open lane on the right where we’re gleefully marching past. Incredibly, almost no one else seemed to have figured this out (I won't say no one, because we did see one family with what I think must have been a nine-year-old they'd forced to sit in a stroller for the day). There’s no way we could’ve gone through the Pavilion otherwise; we’d have turned back for nap-time after a few hours of nothing-but-jostling. But instead, we got to take in the whole place, we found a great dumpling place across the street, and we got home in time for naps! Parents, I hardly need to tell you what a miracle this is; it’d be like parking your RV right in front of Lincoln Center and being asked to move up to the front row so your toddler can get a better look at Yo-Yo Ma.
We didn’t spend every day of the holiday being tourists. We got in a good dose of cozy, domestic fun and snuggle-time, too. We took the boys out to fly a kite in the big field at the back of the compound (or anyway it’s the closest thing the compound has to a big field). I’d gotten them a bird kite, like the ones we saw at Cheng Feng Park (and yes, this is the same kind of kite I got hit in the head with), and we went out to get it airborne. Mostly this involved me running around the field panting, but I’m proud to say we did get her to stay aloft for several minutes, despite the almost nonexistent wind, and even prouder that Kai experienced holding and flying the kite on his own; the thrill in his eyes was simply gorgeous. Keegan didn’t hold the kite, but he had a blast running around and trying to eat grass anyway. Once, the kite was eaten by a tree branch, and Kai said “Daddy, can you make the bird come out of the tree?” I did, which to me felt a bit like winning an oscar might feel, I imagine. On the whole, we got away with it in fine fashion, as I often do, but here’s a hot insider tip: if you want to fly a kite, pick a day with at least a little bit of wind.
One afternoon after nap our friends Patricia and Richard and their boys Raphael and Issac came over, and my gorgeous, multitalented wife whipped up a batch of cookie dough, setting us all to cutting out and decorating a slew of bunnies, fish, dinosaurs, stars, houses, and gingerbread men. In the old days before kids I used to be chief decorator, but now I’m a lackey and general factotum for Kai, Keegan, and in this case their buddies, too. We made and ate some quality cookie products; I wish I could share them with all of you. I’m sure Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is working on making that possible at this very moment, but in the meantime you’ll have to settle for pictures. Maybe by the time I write the next blog post . . .
