Our Man In… China
James Zhao, our email expert, has just returned from a trip to Beijing where he spent the Chinese New Year in true style. This is what he had to say about his experience.
Chinese New Year is completely unlike New Year in the UK and that’s what I love it about it. Here New Year is all about going out and having fun but in China it’s about reuniting with friends and family to celebrate the birth of a brand new year. This is the only time in the year when we can get the whole family together and that makes it really special. It’s something like Christmas here in the UK, with lots of presents and a family get together (except that Chinese New Year lasts a lot longer). Unfortunately I’m married so I can’t receive any gift money from my uncles and aunts any more, gutted.
One of the most important (and for me the best) things about Chinese New Year is the food. For fifteen days straight we eat and eat and eat! Dumplings, nian gao, pineapple tarts and so many sweets and snacks! For the most part we go out, restaurants have longer opening hours at this time of year and there’s a real party atmosphere out in the streets. You can get delicacies from all over China so for the two weeks elasticised waistbands are a definite must! And of course every restaurant has a New Year theme with decorations covering everything. Most of these are paper decorations in deep reds and golds but there are whole multitude of other colours on display too. The streets are decorated too, with paper lanterns strung from rooftops and glittering strings of baubles draped over shop fronts. The streets are packed with people heading to local temples or for the massive fireworks display in Ditan Park. Everywhere you go there were street vendors serving up pork dumplings and pig-shaped sweets to celebrate the beginning of the year of the pig.
The whole city is lit up by thousands of fireworks. This year was the second year since the ban on fireworks was lifted in Beijing and everyone seemed to be making up for what they’d been missing out on for so long. They started long before New Years Eve and were pretty constant from then on (you can’t even think about sleeping because the explosions are non-stop throughout the night). Like everything else associated with Chinese New Year, these firework displays are steeped in tradition. It’s thought that they’ll scare away bad spirits and drive off bad luck. It’s the only thing you can smell when you walk through the streets and a lot of people, myself included, now associated the smell of fireworks with New Year itself (which makes fireworks night back here in the UK somewhat surreal).
We went to a great display at my friend’s apartment complex. Every available fire extinguisher had been taken from its dusty brackets and lined up in front of the building – just in case. Doesn’t exactly fill a guy with confidence but even that couldn’t ruin it for me. Everyone was out in the courtyard with their eyes turned towards the sky. Windows were shaking, debris was falling everywhere and no one even noticed. And the noise! These aren’t just small fireworks, they’re huge. The bangs can be heard for miles around so when you’re stood right underneath them it’s just mental. There’s no way you can have a conversation while they’re going off, you can’t even get yourself heard to ask for another drink. As the night went on the air began to fill with smoke and that tell-tale smell begins to stir memories of all the Chinese New Years that came before. I can’t emphasise enough how different this is from the well-controlled, small displays that you get in the UK. There’s an element of chaos here that makes it all the more exciting.
On New Years day we took a trip to the local temple fair, to enjoy the entertainment. With throngs of people gathering for the festivities we found ourselves being hustled and bustled and generally knocked about. It’s an incredible atmosphere, something like a concert or music festival where everyone is just gathering together to have a good time. All around us singers were performing, vendors were selling their wares and people were laughing. Stalls are packed full of tasty snacks and we found ourselves eating our way through most of the festival.
On the few nights that we decided to stay in we whisked up a feast of fresh dumplings stuffed with meat, vegetables and grain. Dumplings are thought to bring sons, wealth and prosperity and that makes them perfect for the New Year period. On the last day of celebrations (Chinese New Year traditionally lasts fifteen days) we have Tang Yuan, which are made from sticky rice flour made into a dough with water. The dough is shaped into balls and filled with sesame or red bean paste. Tang Yuan traditionally represents union (I guess because the ingredients merge together to form a whole) and that’s what Chinese New Year is all about. We eat them on the last day to remind us of why we’ve come together and to celebrate one last time the reunion of the family in a world where we are growing steadily apart.
The whole thing was over way too soon and before I knew it I was back on the plane and travelling towards a somewhat gloomy Sunday afternoon in Leeds. And what does the New Year hold? Almost certainly a diet. That’s what Chinese New Year does to you.
