Spring Festival with Bonnie and Clyde

Thursday, February 7 marks the beginning of the Year of the Rat in the Chinese lunar calendar. And much like at home where we gather to eat and make merry on December 31^st, the Chinese get together with their families to celebrate on the eve of the New Year. Here they call it Spring Festival because the New Year coincides with the changing of the seasons—spring is supposedly on its way. Most of you have probably heard about the snow and ice storms here that stranded many of the 178 million people trying to make it home for Spring Festival. I am sure all of them will be very glad to see spring make its appearance. We returned home from our vacation happy to spend the New Year among familiar surroundings and in our own itty bitty home.

Clyde—Mr. Song—invited us to share in the festivities with his family. He and his wife Bonnie had hoped to be celebrating in their new apartment but with the approach of this largest of all Chinese holidays, he just couldn’t find the workers needed to finish outfitting his place (here, when you buy an apartment you are responsible for finishing it—bath fixtures, flooring, walls, kitchen fixtures, all must be put in by the buyer.) Because of course all the workers returned home to be with their families. Picture Spring Festival like our Christmas—everyone shopping, buying decorations and putting them up, planning traditional meals, making travel plans—but transposed onto a country the size of China. Everyone doing the same thing, all at the same time. The energy and obvious excitement over the coming holiday made even us, pitiful out-of-the-loop foreigners that we are, feel its importance in the lives of everyone around us. Red lanterns have been strung up in front of homes and businesses and across roads; vertical and horizontal red paper banners decorated with Chinese characters wishing good luck, health, and prosperity are pasted around every door front. And everywhere you look you can see vendors selling fireworks.

I know it's dark and fuzzy, but I just had to have Dave take a picture so you could get an idea of the lanterns and the paper banners on either side of the door as well as along the top. This is the front door of the IEC, where we had dinner.

Traditionally, families gather in the evening to share dinner and watch t.v., waiting for midnight. At midnight, after a spectacular fireworks display (more on this later), everyone eats jiaozi and then stays up all night. Staying up all night, along with the kinds of foods, the specials on t.v., the fireworks, everything is part of tradition and has special significance. And all of it is directed towards welcoming in good luck for the New Year and scaring away bad luck (this is where the fireworks come in).

The kids and I arrived at Clyde’s room (he and Bonnie live on the ground floor of the International Exchange College, a building that contains student “dorm” rooms along with administrative offices and classrooms) around 6:00—Dave had gone a little earlier to help out with the cooking. Clyde’s parents were there, as well as one of the IEC concierges and his wife, and also Rich, an American hailing from Vermont who recently arrived to teach second semester in the English Department at IMNU. Along with the four of us, we had a very nice gathering.

Clyde and Bonnie frying spring rolls.

Dave and Clyde's dad--Dave is stuffing slices of lotus root with jiaozi stuffing, ground pork and spices. Lao Song then fried the lotus root. Very tasty and salty.

You can tell by these pictures that the meal wasn't cooked in a traditional kitchen. These are two rooms that serve as a general cooking and laundry area to the students who live in the IEC building. When my washing machine broke, this is where I came to do my laundry. It is amazing that so much food could be prepared over just a couple of hotplates. Once the cooking was finished--and most of it was done by Clyde's dad, Clyde, and Bonnie--everyone gathered in a small dorm room to eat.

Lao Song (left), the concierge, Mrs. Song (right). In front of them from left to right: tomatoes with sugar sprinkled on top, chicken feet, nibbly dish--I don't know what, spring rolls, fried fat, noodles with wood-ear mushrooms and shredded cucumbers.

Me and Grace, Rich on the right. In front of us: meat balls, barbequed mutton, crunchy pink, white, and yellow things, a whole chicken.

Clyde explained to us that round foods represent family, the lotus root in a circular shape represents coins for prosperity. Not shown in the pictures were two different fish plates, one of fried mackerel pieces, the other a whole piece of freshwater fish. Fish represents abundance. I am sure that the other plates had meanings but I did not find them out. Clyde did say that pretty much everything they served is what his family eats every year for New Year's. Very much like our Thanksgiving dinner--you gotta have the same things every year. We ate a lot and there was much toasting going around, with Clyde translating back and forth.

After we ate, we went out front to let the kids set off some fireworks. Dave bought a behemoth (or so we thought at the time) box of fireworks that when set off shot balls of fire straight up in the air, where they burst open like the fireworks we only get to see set off by the city at home. Wonderful showers of color. The kids held firecracker whips and little torch things. I am not a fireworks fan, but with Clyde there supervising everything I figured we were safe.

Happy kids and their fire sticks. It was freezing outside, by the way. Not at all like the fourth of July in more ways than one.

Frozen to the core, we came back in where the kids promptly ran off to play video games on Clyde's computer (oh, I thought, this is how you get kids to stay up to midnight without complaining...) and I went into another room to help stuff jiaozi. I am so in love with the process of making jiaozi! Eating it is pretty nice, too.

Me, the concierge's wife, Mrs. Song, Bonnie. Apparently I passed the test and they were all pleased with my jiaozi stuffing technique. Phew!

Midnight came faster than I expected, thankfully, since I am normally not much of a night owl. We ran outside first to watch the fireworks go off. I can't even figure out how to find the words to most clearly describe what it felt like. It was like being in a Fourth of July fireworks show. Everywhere around us fireballs shot up into the sky to burst out in huge sprays of color. What I had originally thought was a huge box of fireworks (our contribution) became totally dwarfed in size by the gigantic boxes of fireworks set out in the parking lot in front of the IEC. Balls of fire shot straight up, burst into color, and rained back down just in front of us. All around us you could smell the sulfur and literally feel the booming of the firecrackers strung out on the pavement looking like ammunition belts. As an inveterate scrooge when it comes to fireworks, I have to admit it felt like Christmas morning when the real Scrooge realized he still had time to change the course of events in his life--I just couldn't stop smiling and laughing and saying "Wow!" It was really incredibly marvelous. The kids ran around (safely out of the way of the fireworks) howling like wolves and giggling, just plain delirious from the late hour and the raucous sense of controlled anarchy around us. The thought that all of China was doing exactly the same thing just really made the whole event even more incredible and immense.

We returned from this excitement to find jiaozi on the table. We happily gobbled it up, toasted the New Year and our friends, then scooted off for home, tired and serenaded by a constant chorus of booms, pops, and whistles.