Gong Xi Fa Cai

Gong Xi Fa Cai! Happy New Year!
Today starts the year of the pig in China. So long to the dog, it's old news now. All the dog people can stop wearing their red underwear now. They had their year. Ring in the pig!
So that's two animals I will have gotten through during my time in China, and I've been wondering today how many more I will see come and go before I move on. I wonder if I will be here long enough to see my own year (tiger) come around in 2010? It would be worth it just for all the red underwear gags - and I would wear them too. Yes, the Chinese believe it's lucky to wear red underwear all year during your birth year, and in Shanghai all you have to do is look up into a flapping laundry line on any street to see that it's not some old wives tale. There's no shortage of bright red undies.
Of course anything red is lucky at any time here, so it helps that I'm a bit of a shoe horse (is that a term? A guy who owns lots of shoes?) Anyway, I have at least three pairs of red sneakers, and I get compliments on them every time out from the locals. "I like your shoes" they will announce automatically, as if in a trance; it's learned behavior. Red is lucky, so therefore my sneakers are lucky too. I also have a nice red sheets and duvet cover set, but that's another story completely.
The past few days I have been walking around Shanghai breathing in the excitement and anticipation that's in the air. Markets that are normally crowded to claustrophobic levels are even more crowded, as everyone hustles to get gifts and provisions for the coming two weeks. That's right, everyone gets two whole weeks off. And they get another week in May, and once again in October for the Mooncake Festival. Yes, the Chinese get a lot of time off work (but don't tell the French, that could easily set off a spate of bourgeois rioting). I'm not complaining. I am in Shanghai for Chinese New year, and it's worth the other eleven and a half months of street showdowns and little defeats. Suddenly people aren't honking as much, (but of course they haven't stopped honking completely, that would be cause for alarm), and they seem to be moving a bit slower, even as they get on with their holiday rituals - buying fruit, dried fish and poultry, small gifts and red envelopes (for the kids, who all get cash), and of course beijiu, the atomic "wine" that smells like a mixture of rotten fruit and airplane glue. Of course maybe that's why they're moving a bit slower lately - that stuff will bring you down just as fast as it takes you up.
Oh, and it's like World War III outside, lest we forget who invented gunpowder. The fire crackers, rockets, and bombs started a few days ago in fits and spurts, building slowly in intensity, until tonight's crescendo. This morning I was jolted out of a sound sleep by what I can only describe as something sounding like a building collapsing, or possibly a nuclear test. Cracking open a startled eye, my initial thought was 'they're working on Chinese New year?' Since old buildings go down all the time it wasn't a stretch. But no, it was just a few kids having a bit of fun in the school yard across the road - lighting off a few grenades before breakfast.
As I went down to the beloved C-Store I ran into my neighbor from across the hallway - she of the perma-scowl and nary a good word (or any word, at least not to me). "Ni hao" she said, sweet as could be, and then smiled at me as I tried to hide my surprise. Were my ears playing tricks? Chuckling good naturedly, she then hit me with a broadside. "Gong Xi Fa Cai" she fairly sang out, stunning me anew. And finally the death blow; "That means happy new year in Chinese" she said, humming away, and handed me a tangerine wrapped in clear plastic before she turned the corner to her apartment. And this from a woman who has never uttered a word to me in ten months, much less in English. It made me wonder, is it me who's been unfriendly for ten months?
Down on the street it's an odd mixture of ghost town and war games. Most of the shops are shut, and there's far less foot and motorized traffic, but as soon as you start to enjoy it someone lights off a rug of firecrackers right next to you. It's unnerving. The first few days I was walking around like a cat on a hot tin roof, but now I've gotten into the spirit of it. I admit a well placed cherry bomb sent me ducking into the C-Store earlier today. I tried to play it off like I was just sort of swooping cavalierly into the shop, but the girl behind the counter saw me and heard the bomb go off and started snickering, but then gave me a conspiratorial, world weary nod. I'm her regular customer after all.
After a long dim sum feast in the afternoon I took a walk around the neighborhood to get a feel for the building excitement. The atmosphere was changing by the moment. By about 3 pm the noise started to be regular: Bang! Boom! Rat Tat Tat! and various whistling noises that I can't recreate onomatopoeically. By six there were no longer intervals of silence between the explosions, and the landscape began to resemble a happy, rosy cheeked version of urban warfare, as young boys raced to and fro lighting off all manner of ordinance. It was at that point that I decided I would stay home and enjoy the festivities at midnight before calling it an early night. Since I live on the 31st floor and have excellent views on all sides, I figured I'd be in good shape, looking down on it all.
By around ten o'clock the sounds outside were not only regular, but getting very crowded. Layers of noise were being added by the minute, so that it became a thick aural blanket, drowning out all other street sounds, and punctuated regularly by building shaking explosions. I was watching Woody Allen's Bananas on DVD, and had to keep turning the volume up. Occasionally there would be an explosion so violent as to make me jump up from the couch and peer out into the ever-growing mayhem outside. I put my glasses on and could see people walking around in the street as rockets launched right by them. Taxis were casually driving around Persian carpets of firecrackers and disappearing in cumulus clouds of sulphuric smoke, only to reappear and let some customers out in the middle of it all. Everyone seemed happy and excited, and not a bit worried about getting an arm blown off.
Looking up at the clock as the movie ended I noticed it was 11:30 and I had the TV's volume almost all the way up; indeed the noise outside had recently ratcheted up to an unprecedented level. I went to make a pot of tea and from my kitchen window the building across from me looked like it was being hit with a strobe light. The fireworks were incessant now, and multi-leveled. People were lighting them from the courtyard, streets, apartments, middle of the road - anywhere and everywhere. I took my cuppa excitedly into the guest bedroom, since it's on the corner and has the most unobstructed views. Starting from about 11:45 until 12:15 I was treated to a display the likes of which I've never seen before. It dwarfed any Macy's Fourth of July I've ever witnessed. It was an entire city blowing up, incessantly, for half an hour.
The people downstairs from my building, on Danshui Lu, had set up a sort of makeshift launching pad area, and this served as the nerve center for our block. But every other block also had one. They never stopped setting off rockets once during that half hour, many of them actually reaching up higher than my building - but most of the big ones exploding right at my eye level, giving me the feeling of being inside the beautiful, multi-hued explosions. Bits of sizzling rockets were tinging off my windows, inches from my face. A few smashed against the side of my building before ricocheting off and exploding. It was intense. I got lost in it for a while and didn't realise when midnight had struck, only that the intensity of my dream got deeper. My forehead was pressed up against the window, the breath from my nose fogging the pane. I was gone...
Suddenly I was eleven years old and watching the Fourth of July fireworks in a football stadium, losing myself and all my budding adolescent problems in the explosions in the sky. I felt that confused loss of innocence again, as I remembered a time when I still had an excuse. What happened so long ago to that kid who played baseball fiercely and told tall tales - that boy with a many-hued imagination who dreamed a life that wasn't his? What happened that made him go another way while so many others went the straight route? All those mad years; losing himself in order to gain a life. Lost in the flying fire, I recalled, no re-lived, those feelings, and in my reverie I found myself asking: How did I get here? How did I make it to Hefei Lu in Shanghai, China on Chinese New Year watching fireworks from my apartment high above the city? What has guided my path here? How did I find the power to ever leave New York?
But here I am - from Chinatown to a town in China. Looking out at the electric black sky with its flashes and flames, I felt sure the answer is not in the knowing. The answer is in the accepting.