The first of two new year's is here and right now Xinhua West Road is an interesting mix of sparkly eyed Santas that with their big blue eyes, small flowers, and lots of red manage to fit in with the red decorations coming up for Spring Festival. He makes quite a pair with the god of wealth, Cai Shen, who's been making an appearance in shops here with his black beard and mustache, bearing a gold ingot and surrounded by all kinds of symbols of prosperity and fortune.
Ecco il Babbo Natale!
CaiShen, god of wealth, carrying a scroll with the words "CaiShen dao" (roughly "Come, CaiShen", inviting him to bring wealth)
Although my contract allows me to take Christmas day off, it's not a national holiday here. My kids still had school and a lot of have told me they don't get presents on Christmas day. However, it has made its way in commercially and some places will decorate their windows or get fake trees (such as across the street from where I live and the bright pink tree I saw once outside a hotel in Changsha). China has even developed its own special traditions around Christmas. Christmas eve here is called "ping an ye" (平安夜), which shares a sound with "ping guo" （苹果） or the Chinese word for apple. So people here gift apples to each other. They can come in nice little individual boxes and are sold with special patterns or characters on them. Some of my students were a little surprised when I told them we don't really have a "common gift" that we can all expect from each other. I told them we like the idea that you put some thought about the individual into the gifts you give.
Special Christmas apples with the characters for "ping an" and "fu" (luck) on them.
My Christmas day was a bit busier than anticipated. I initially took the day off thinking that a day in would be pretty awesome. Maybe drink something and not worry about the next day's responsibilities or having to plan something. It was still a pretty good day though, I performed Rudolph with my site (and slipped more than once since I haven't been too good about practicing violin everyday) and helped a friend with cooking for a Christmas potluck. I was exhausted and a little unhappy that I couldn't just let loose or go where the evening would take me since I had some tutoring to do at 9:30 in the morning the next day. The kids are growing on me even though I should know better by now. We went over "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" together since I had over an hour with them to draw pictures and go over some of the older or more obscure words so that they understood and were exposed to a classic bit of English literature (and general cultural literacy that helps around Christmas). They must have loved my pictures and all the arrows showing them roughly where Santa was standing and what he was doing at each moment in the poem. They loved that I actually went over his physical description by drawing his face with roses on his cheeks, stars for eyes, cherries for a nose, and a circle of smoke around his head. Not a bad day after Christmas. I promised myself I'd go crazy New Year's eve to make up for having things to do the day after Christmas, but when New Year's even came I had a hard time even staying up until 12AM or even thinking of what I'd want to do. I took the loser route, paid 102 kuai for a large pizza, bought some alcohol, stared at the prosecco which was 88 yuan then thought better of it because the cork would make me nervous, watched a movie, listened to fireworks boom around my apartment, and let myself pass out. I thought I'd be asleep all day, but I think I woke up at around 10AM and decided to just have a brunch of leftovers and grabbed some 3 yuan coffee on the way to the bus stop and took a bus out to Yandi Square/Shennong City. I think I had some things I wanted from the import store as well as a new bottle opener because I managed to find Martinelli's apple cider but the cap just bent my opener up so all I've been able to do so far is stare and feel nostalgic. I didn't get my opener, I just walked around the Shennong altar which I've always enjoyed for its relative quiet, the smell of incense, and to contemplate what exactly each version of Shennong is meant to offer to those who pay respects there.
New Years day was the day "Small Door Gods" (小门神) came out, which is an animated film for kids so I decided to just go ahead and watch it while I floated around the SunMall next Shennong City. I was strangely unashamed about going to see a kids movie alone on the first day of 2016. They only had it in 3d, so it was pricier than usual but I enjoyed it more than I thought. They had English subtitles, which was great because I'd gone in assuming I'd just have to pick up all kinds of other cues to follow the story. It was also great that my high school Chinese class and an interest in mythology already made me familiar with a few things since this movie was about warding away the monster Nian and Chinese new year traditions. CaiShen got his appearance in, which made me laugh after seeing his face in a tea shop and a convenience store among other places.
New Years day was the day "Small Door Gods" (小门神) came out, which is an animated film for kids so I decided to just go ahead and watch it while I floated around the SunMall next Shennong City. I was strangely unashamed about going to see a kids movie alone on the first day of 2016. They only had it in 3d, so it was pricier than usual but I enjoyed it more than I thought. They had English subtitles, which was great because I'd gone in assuming I'd just have to pick up all kinds of other cues to follow the story. It was also great that my high school Chinese class and an interest in mythology already made me familiar with a few things since this movie was about warding away the monster Nian and Chinese new year traditions. CaiShen got his appearance in, which made me laugh after seeing his face in a tea shop and a convenience store among other places.
CaiShen （财神）the god of wealth, changing to meet the times
Though I can't help feeling like there's something big in the plot that needs some explaining, I enjoyed just sitting back and studying the backgrounds the characters were working in, the things taken as normal in their world on the screen. I was a little startled by one part where a man has a hot bowl of wonton soup so delicious he flashes back to a time he once saw a beautiful girl with pigtails. In the flashback, with Kenny G's saxophone playing, we see him as a young man in a green suit, his hat without a red star but nonetheless suggesting the times. I walked out thinking about the movie I had just seen about gods out of work as people no longer respect or worship them. I thought about some of the things I learned at school, the things I'd learned about Chinese New Year from family and the things I'd learned from books. It occurred to me how very strange and banal my day really was. I once heard about how an aunt was startled by how my family celebrated the ghost month since China was trying to move away from the old superstitions and no one had really done that for a century. I thought about the world my great-grandparents left, the one full of ritual and superstition that changed to a world where people tried to get away from those kinds of backwards things to where I am now, watching a kids movie about Nian and door gods with 3d glasses and a coke in a big mall. A movie about remembering the old gods and traditions in a mall housing a Pacific Coffee and a McDonalds next to a statue of Shennong.
A lot came to me with that thought, about how this family never seems completely out of touch with China and certain things I feel like I shouldn't understand this many generations down (though studies have shown that regardless of how many generations a family has been in America, family structure tend to remain the same as in the country of origin) still spark some kind of recognition. There's a mother-in-law looking after her grandson on the same floor as my office at school and she always picks up little Jerry's hand to wave and says "Ah yi hao" (Hello aunty) and it's funny for me to be called aunty and realize that I've also called people aunty that I had no blood relation to back home. At times I wonder if, even though I grew up in a house that only spoke English and (in my eyes) didn't really take part in many Chinese holidays or rituals, it's possible to still turn out psychologically Chinese in some way. It may just be that I grew up in an area with so many other Chinese-Americans too. I haven't told my students that "back home" has an 85C bakery just like here and that people sometimes dressed as Sun WuKong or got together in a Chinese dragon costume for Halloween. Or maybe it's that towards the end of my time in college I was getting better at embracing where and when I was and started taking advantage of the fact that I was in Europe at a time when Europe was asking itself what a Europe with all these immigrant communities was going to be like and visited Chinese communities in Milan, London, and Madrid. In a way, regardless of what my family did or did not do at home, China seems to have echoed itself to me over and over again in its overseas communities. When people ask about my experiences here, I've kind of struggled with what it's like to finally set foot in a place you've heard and read so much about, that's been so weirdly out of reach and familiar all at once. I guess I should give the whole why I came to China it's own post in the future because I feel like I've gone on long enough, though most of it boils down to things that seemed to all line up together and were right for me at the end of my time in college.
But I've got a whole new year for blogging about these things. For now, happy first of two new years from China!
A lot came to me with that thought, about how this family never seems completely out of touch with China and certain things I feel like I shouldn't understand this many generations down (though studies have shown that regardless of how many generations a family has been in America, family structure tend to remain the same as in the country of origin) still spark some kind of recognition. There's a mother-in-law looking after her grandson on the same floor as my office at school and she always picks up little Jerry's hand to wave and says "Ah yi hao" (Hello aunty) and it's funny for me to be called aunty and realize that I've also called people aunty that I had no blood relation to back home. At times I wonder if, even though I grew up in a house that only spoke English and (in my eyes) didn't really take part in many Chinese holidays or rituals, it's possible to still turn out psychologically Chinese in some way. It may just be that I grew up in an area with so many other Chinese-Americans too. I haven't told my students that "back home" has an 85C bakery just like here and that people sometimes dressed as Sun WuKong or got together in a Chinese dragon costume for Halloween. Or maybe it's that towards the end of my time in college I was getting better at embracing where and when I was and started taking advantage of the fact that I was in Europe at a time when Europe was asking itself what a Europe with all these immigrant communities was going to be like and visited Chinese communities in Milan, London, and Madrid. In a way, regardless of what my family did or did not do at home, China seems to have echoed itself to me over and over again in its overseas communities. When people ask about my experiences here, I've kind of struggled with what it's like to finally set foot in a place you've heard and read so much about, that's been so weirdly out of reach and familiar all at once. I guess I should give the whole why I came to China it's own post in the future because I feel like I've gone on long enough, though most of it boils down to things that seemed to all line up together and were right for me at the end of my time in college.
But I've got a whole new year for blogging about these things. For now, happy first of two new years from China!
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