scribbler at large

With another lunar year under my belt, I can confirm that the pace of change in Beijing is super fast. I spent last summer telling newcomers to brace for the terrible winter air quality, only to see *almost* smogless skies since November. Add to that the revolving door of restaurants opening and shutting down, streets being gutted and rebuilt, new regulations for the placement of signs, and the city is almost unrecognizable. It even seems like there are fewer food carts and over-loaded scooters/tuk-tuks on the street—Beijing is buffing out the rough edges…2022 Olympics here we come!

In keeping with that theme, we'd been warned that Beijing would be loud and the air quality terrible over Chinese New Year, but thanks to the government's ban on firecrackers within Beijing’s fifth ring road, none of that was true. Chinese New Year, or Spring Festival (春节, choon-jyeah), began the week of February 12 and is just now drawing to a close. We missed it last year because we were in Hawaii, but the expat advice here is to stick around for at least one. Unlike ye old work-obsessed USA, the Chinese still seem to carve out serious time to celebrate Spring Festival, with some folks taking several weeks off from work, and the rest taking a week.

Spring Festival posters. The diamond-shaped posters feature the character "fu," explained below. These two are right side up.

The Chinese lunar year typically begins sometime in February, although it shifts year to year. Even if you’ve never been to China, you probably still know about the Chinese Zodiac (maybe from menus at Chinese restaurants?). You may also know that we’ve just entered the Year of the Dog, leaving the Year of the Rooster behind. Each zodiac animal recurs every twelve years, so your birth year animal will revisit you when you’re 12, 24, 36, etc. Fun fact: Winston Churchill, Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Mother Teresa were all born in the Year of the Dog. Of note: it’s actually bad luck when your zodiac year arrives. To combat said bad luck, the tradition is to wear red (anything from underwear to bracelets, to sweaters to neckties) throughout the year. The catch is that someone else has to buy those red things for you—don’t go buying stuff yourself. As you may have noticed, red is is already a popular wardrobe choice in China, regardless of birth year.

In the weeks leading up to Spring Festival, Beijing got a mini makeover—red lanterns lined the streets and red paper cut designs went up in windows and on doors. Red sheets of paper painted with black characters (called “couplets” sometimes) were pasted on either side of doorways. My reading skills are still pretty low, but I do know that these banners usually sport poems about spring or good wishes for prosperity. The character 福 (pronounced “foo”), which means good fortune, or “blessing,” often gets hung upside down on doorways. This is a play on words—to say “upside down 福” in Chinese sounds the same as “good fortune arrives," thanks to homophones.

This kind of tricksy wordplay is super common here, and really interesting if you have the time and attention span to dig into it. Another example: the Chinese word for Christmas Eve is 平安夜 (Píng'ān yè), which means silent peaceful night. The Chinese word for “apple” is 苹果 (Píngguǒ) which sounds similar…and therefore the Chinese give away apples on Christmas Eve, calling them ping’anguo (平安果), or “peace apples.” In more complex wordplay news, many small kumquat trees appeared in the hallways of our building during Spring Festival, most of them hung with red envelopes (see hongbao explanation below). I’ll let you look up the kumquat story on your own time if you’re interested.

Hong-bao, or red envelopes, used to give money.

Cash is a common Spring Festival gift here, and is presented in red envelopes to family members, friends, and sometimes employees. These are called hong-bao (红包, meaning “red package") and get used for occasions of all kinds, to include weddings. You can even send someone a digital hongbao through Wechat, the Chinese app giant.

Family time at the chuanr (meat on a stick) stand.

This holiday is all about spending time with family and eating together (dumplings are a traditional Spring Festival food—they resemble coin purses and bring good fortune). So traditionally everyone goes home to hang with their families, and the number of travelers around this holiday is staggering. This year the city streets began to empty out on Monday and Tuesday (Feb 12-14), and by Thursday (New Year’s Eve) Beijing was quiet and the sidewalks empty. It was eerie, and also exciting—sort of like rearranging the furniture in your living room. Different! But still the same.

At the entrance to the temple fair. #selfie

After spending a few Spring Festival vacation days lounging on the couch watching the Olympics, baking, and drinking at abnormal hours, my husband and I finally left the house to visit a temple fair. These events happen at designated spots around the city, and typically run for several days. We rode bikes to Ditan Park, which is in the city’s north-central area, and home to one of the Beijing's oldest, biggest fairs. Here we discovered that all the people we thought had disappeared were in fact at this temple fair.

Actually, it turned out that all of the tourist spots in Beijing were swamped over the holiday, with the Forbidden City hitting it’s max of 80,000 visitors in one day. Allegedly, one (different) temple fair saw 140,000 visitors on New Year’s Day.

The crowd at Ditan Park. 人山人海, as they say, ren shan ren hai. Direct translation: people mountain people sea. Meaning: TONS of people. — The crowd at Ditan Park. 人山人海, as they say, *ren shan ren hai.* Direct translation: people mountain people sea. Meaning: TONS of people.

Fake blossoms on winter trees in Ditan Park.

Ditan Park was decked out in red lanterns, and some trees had fake flowers wound around their branches to give the (very real) illusion of spring flowers. It’s been a while since I’ve felt immersed in Chinese culture (despite living here?) so it was fun to mingle with folks celebrating an annual tradition. We followed the crowd, listening to Chinese music in the distance sometimes interspersed with Bruno Mars and Michael Jackson (origin: unknown). We saw lots of adorable children wearing super cool celebratory hats, and tried to shove our way into position to watch a lion dance. You’ve probably seen some variation of these dances in a Chinatown near you, or on TV—these are the performances that include larger-than-life dragon lion heads (and bodies) painted in red and gold. It was a little bit jarring to see it in China, in real life, rather than in imitation—one of those “wow, I’m actually in Beijing,” moments that are hard to describe and somehow very backwards.

The crowd watching the lion dance. Check out that cool hat with the giant antennae. We saw many of those, and I don't know what they mean.

I would tell you more about the performance, but aside from a rogue lion head here and there I couldn’t see anything over the crowd. The little kids sitting on dad's shoulders were the only ones with a solid view, which I decided not to resent…given their age and all. We moved on to the snack and craft vendors, walking past tables of specialty gifts, nifty toys, and sugar animals. Here's a photographic sampling:

People crowded around the gent on the right making hand-blown sugar animals (the kid on the left is holding one).

The same guy making hand-blown sugar animals.

Cool red spinny thing, plus another cool hat with antennae.

Performer drawing the kids out of the crowd.

After a couple of hours of people watching and random snacking we headed back home to reunite with our couch. In the subsequent days Beijing has filled up again. Yesterday morning I had to resume looking both ways forty times before crossing the street, keeping my ears peeled for the silent-but-deadly scooter in the wrong lane. The city is still not quite at full throttle yet, but should be by Friday.

Chinese New Year wasn’t action packed for us, but it was cool to get a peripheral taste of the collective family celebration.

That’s all for now, but we’re headed to Hong Kong later this week so I’ll have some stuff to share here after that. PS, my husband took most of the photos in this post.