winter semester

This winter season has instigated a distinct cultural clash between our little family and the citizens of Chengdu.  According to large swaths of the general public over the age of 40 – and frankly, most people of any age at all – we have no clue how to dress a baby for winter. The city’s roving peanut gallery, upon seeing our son in his winter coat, hat and mittens, tends to respond with audible gasps, collective tsk-tsking, and impassioned rebukes.

Concerned members of the public also like to feel our son’s pants to confirm their worst fears. It’s then that the real cry of alarm goes up: 一条裤子?? 一条裤子! ! ! One pair of pants?? ONE PAIR OF PANTS! It’s a trial and conviction in rapid-fire Chinese. Plus, the sheer insanity of discovering a baby who’s wearing only one pair of pants usually attracts a crowd of rubberneckers who can’t miss seeing the aberration for themselves.

It happened in the grocery store a couple of weekends ago when a grandmotherly older woman conducted a quick survey of the baby’s pants and announced that we needed to dress him in more clothes because he was not warm enough. I politely told her we felt he was wearing enough clothes and she shouldn’t be concerned. Then I mentioned that we have heat in our home and leave our windows closed so he is really quite fine.

This is an important clarification. In Chengdu, in a recklessly optimistic embrace of the concept of “fresh air” people keep their windows open throughout the winter. This is true for homes, offices, schools…  It is such a common practice that most of Chengdu’s citizens spend the day in one consistent temperature and that is whatever temperature it is outside. This helps explain why no one ever takes their coats off (even in meetings) and why children waddle around in several layers of thick quilts shaped like clothes.

This is also why people panic when they see our son without the standard five inches of winter padding. For example, we went to our Chinese teacher’s home for dinner and her in-laws were extremely concerned about letting him crawl around on the cold granite floor. But as he got more and more agitated and more interested in crawling around on the floor we had two options: 1.) put him on the cold floor, or 2.) close the windows and put him on the cold floor. We went with the former and left it to our hosts to decide if further action was needed. The windows remained open.

The good news is that Chengdu has fairly mild winters with temperatures in the high forties most of the time. It’s warm enough that palm trees make it through the season and there are flowers in bloom. For people from Chicago, it’s downright balmy and even a little confusing.

For example, there’s a tree here that I’d never seen before and it seems to flower only at this time of year. The blooms are small and yellow and dot barren branches with no leaves. These trees look lonely and still but they announce their presence with an intense fragrance that finds you even before you find the tree. It is clear and wonderful and sweet and hovers in the air like a cloud.

I didn’t know the name of this tree even though it’s all over our neighborhood so I asked a lady we know. She said it was a la mei tree. Well, actually she said it was a “na mei” tree because she’s from Sichuan and people here tend to use n’s for l’s and vice versa which is even more fun when you’re trying to learn the word for cheese which is pronounced nai lao by everyone except for the millions of people we happen to live with here in Sichuan, but I digress.

We looked up the name and it seems to be Japanese allspice, also known as wintersweet which is as close to a perfect tree name as you’re going to get. And easy to remember. You learn something new every day.

And don't underestimate the educational opportunities available to you at your local hair salon. I learned a ton while getting my hair cut over the weekend. The first thing I learned was that the salon doesn’t take appointments during the Lunar New Year season because this is the busiest time of year and there are too many customers. [Based on the drastically unsuccessful discussions I’ve had here in the past on such topics as improving efficiency and my-fond-memories-of-the-customer-service-experience-in-the-United-States, I opted not to comment on their decision.]

When I finally managed to get a haircut I asked my hairdresser why so many people get their hair cut for the holiday and he told me that not so long ago China was a very different place. He said that New Years was extremely special because you would eat meat and buy new clothes – two things that didn’t happen often otherwise. He said he clearly remembers being excited for New Year as a kid because you got to go shopping and you would get a hair cut to make a good start of the year ahead.

He said things are different in China now; people eat meat all the time, go shopping, and regularly get their hair cut at salons. But as recently as fifteen years ago, he said, it was completely different.

On a lighter note he also told me that it was ok for me not to dye my hair here because he’s sure that Chinese people won’t notice the white hair on my head. He very earnestly explained that Chinese people think all of my hair looks the same. But, he went on to clarify that if I go back to America I might need to consider it.  

For us Chengdu is like a giant hazy classroom. There are the older ladies who want to teach you how to dress your child; the locals who teach you the names of good-smelling trees; and the hairstylist who teaches you modern Chinese history and cross-cultural views on grey hair in a single sitting. Who knows what we’ll learn next.

Year of the Horse here we come!

  

quiet new year

I’d hate to leave you thinking that Chinese New Year is only the loud and rowdy kind. There are quiet moments too, the bits of calm in the fireworks storm. But you have to seek them out because they're tucked away behind closed doors and waiting for you to find them.

The best place to look is the temples where throngs of Chinese go to start the New Year. Families and individuals, couples and small groups, they're all moving through the spaces, lighting incense and candles, and following traditions that have drawn them in, away from the noise and commotion.

Even if you're unfamiliar with the intricacies of the beliefs (as we are) you should still visit a temple during the New Year holiday. There’s a beautiful flow to the believers and their movements, and a lush incense cloud hovers in the space.

The fragrant wisps that rise from incense are a special kind of smoke, and they gently insist that it's not just fireworks, but also this sort of serenity, that can be brought alive with the lick of a flame.

bacon in the windows

We spent Chinese New Years Eve seeing who was around. Popular wisdom holds that most of China's population spends some portion of this multi-week holiday stretching the limits of the country’s transportation system, so it only made sense to see who decided to stay behind. 

It turns out we weren't the only ones left in Chengdu. There were also a lot of people who really like fireworks, some chickens not long for this world, and a lady running errands in an outfit that's best quality can only be comfort.

Walking around the neighborhood felt very festive. Red lanterns are hanging in front of every apartment building, including ours. And if your home doesn’t have its lanterns yet you can find them at the grocery store. 

You can also find the Year of the Dragon decorations that are plastered everywhere. 

A lot of shops also have hand-written signs telling you when they’ll be reopening after the holiday, some more carefully scripted than others.

There are orange tents filled to the gills with fireworks on most high-traffic corners. 

These are government sanctioned and manned by multi-generational families who nap on cots behind the merchandise. You can start with small items like sparklers and go as large as four-foot tall boxes packed with industrial strength pyrotechnics.

Each tent has at least one bucket of water and a fire extinguisher out front, so as long as no cars go careening off the road and into the tents, we're all safe and sound. This could be why one of us (guess which one) had to up the ante by purchasing his own batch of fireworks to set off later.

While we were out we also bought a bag of tiny mandarin oranges and a green pepper for Shi-Wen’s turkey chili. This didn’t come from a firework tent, but rather from a fruit shop where I got nipped on the shoe by a small dog. No one else seemed to notice, including the little girl eating oranges out front.

Speaking of food on the street, while walking around we also caught a few glimpses of "la rou" 腊肉 drying in apartment windows, like in the lower right below. "La rou" is cured meat – like bacon – and in Chinese the word for cured meat sounds a lot like the word for the last month of the lunar calendar (i.e. December). This play on words means that home-cured meat has long been eaten in Southern China to celebrate the new year. 

Regardless of this city's magical meat-curing climate I’m still not too keen on eating pork that's been hanging in a neighbor’s window for the last month. Or better yet, off their balcony. (And to think, before I got to Chengdu I thought those racks were for laundry.)

drunk on fireworks

Early Sunday evening – aka Chinese New Year’s Eve – Chengdu’s streets were nearly deserted. It was eerily quiet and there was an overwhelming sense that something was coming. Then hour by hour, with the deepening darkness, the sky got brighter and brighter.

It happened in street intersections and in front of apartment buildings. Guys would ferry large boxes into the middle of the street, then set them down. They’d stand there for a minute or two looking for the fuse, and once they’d found it you would see a quick flame and then they'd be hightailing it away from the box as fast as they could because in a few seconds the box was shooting fire into the sky. And with the fire came the shrieking and the booming and the thumps of the pieces that fall from the sky after something explodes.

For some of these bursts we were standing close. And by close I mean not more than twenty feet away from the box. So close that instead of hearing the explosions, you felt them compress all of the air around you and throw it into your eardrums with a thud.

There was just one time when a firework didn’t rise as high into the sky as it should have before it exploded. This was when Shi-wen yelled, “Watch out!” and the giant sparks were coming towards us rather than lighting up the sky. I’ve never been that close to fireworks before and it was thrilling and shocking because it felt so wild. Only when pieces of the sky fell onto my head did it feel like I might be standing too close.

For hours the streets were on fire but the only time I was scared was when some kids were lighting firecrackers without paying any attention to the people around them. Funny how a kid playing with matches is scarier than a city full of adults using them to light giant fireworks. And when I say giant fireworks, I mean the kind that large American cities use for their Fourth of July extravaganzas. But in China you can buy these on street corners and then set them off as police cars roll past. It’s definitely different here.

As we were watching fireworks that were a little too close we started talking with a Chinese guy who smelled like liquor. He was thrilled that we could understand each other and told us all sorts of things. He told us how when Chinese people look at North Korea it reminds them of the way China was several decades ago. He told us how you must support the Chinese government now because good things may happen later. And he said that the American President has a hard time doing his job because in the face of upcoming elections he has to please everyone. He noted, with zero irony, that the plans and decisions of Chinese leaders are not hampered by these kinds of concerns.

His views were different – in the same way that our fireworks laws are different – but the conversation still reminded us of how much we are the same. This is because the theme he kept returning to, the one thing he kept saying over and over, was that whatever problems and difficulties there might be between America and China, that these problems are between our two governments. Because the people, the Chinese people and the American people, like you and me, he said… the people of these two countries are friends and we understand each other and get along. Just like us. Look how we understand each other.

We were standing in a doorway as we talked to this guy because standing in the doorway felt a little safer. But even a doorway wouldn’t be safe enough if the fireworks misfired towards the other side of the street. This is because on that side of the street, like on every street corner in Chengdu, there was an orange tent filled to the roof with fireworks. The tent was the source of the boxes that were being lugged into the intersection. But don’t worry, there are safety precautions: each tent has at least one bucket of water and a fire extinguisher out front.

At first we had wandered the streets watching whatever showed up in the sky, but as it got closer to midnight we moved to a friend’s roof and watched the start of an all-out assault. Initially there were a few fireworks here and there, but then suddenly it looked like every corner was exploding and it sounded like the whole sky was erupting. It was magical. Insane and scary and magical.

We watched an hour of this storm. Watched how when one corner of town slowed, the other picked up the slack. It just kept thundering as the smoke of a million small fires smothered the city. The haze made the buildings look eerie and it intensified the light. The sidewalks and streets glowed like a midnight fairy tale, except that it was after midnight and it was also now a new year.

And in the wake of all the magic, as the booms and shrieks grew less and less frequent, the street cleaners came out to cart away the boxes that had carried all of this excitement. Every intersection had them, and in the places with the biggest bombardments whole lengths of street were littered with them.

As they broke down the boxes, the city got a little quieter. Except that the fireworks never really stopped, they just slowed. As I write this, two days later, there are still explosions and pops and showers of fire falling through the sky. And I’m still running to the window to watch them.

Happy Year of the Dragon!