2009 Chinese New Year Celebration - Chengdu

The Chinese New Year celebration in Chengdu was visually and acoustically an overwhelming experience. There is no peacetime comparison I know of.

Our apartment on the 29th floor, perhaps 180 feet up from the river, has a balcony that looks south-southeast. On clear days, we can see the 1500-meter high mountains about 30 kilometers away. On normal days, we can see, perhaps 5 kilometers. The view is attractive with the Bin Jiang River flowing south and its greenbelt walkways on either side. Across the river, on the west side is the River Pavilion viewing park with its pagoda tea gardens, bamboo botanical area and preserved temples. On weekends it is a flurry of family activity. Children playing, young couples walking placidly under green trees, parents playing mahjong and drinking tea, kite flying along the river banks and a handful of recreational fisherman, fishing for the fish that no one ever sees. Directly across from my five unit high rise apartment complex is the east entrance to Sichuan University with its two to four level classroom buildings, employee and student housing apartments and visitors hotel. Southward towards the second ring road one can see several other new highrise apartments. The spaces between these highrises are filled in by 5 to 10 level apartments. Within this city live 12 million people.

After sundown, by 7 PM, the fireworks had started. These fireworks are legally sold from orange tent stores, located on busy streets, perhaps one every 200 meters; or maybe it just seems that way. After walking around it sure seems that way. These stores have an amazing assortment of decorative explosive devices: children’s sparklers that adult couples and children hold in their hands and wave in circles; hand-held crackers that explode by throwing on the ground; model titanic that floats, explodes and burns; model aircraft carriers that launch small flying crackers; large fire crackers that make noise; bundles of hundreds of small firecrackers that explode for several minutes; ground burning colored flares, blazing flying saucers that burn white and launch themselves into space as alien ships retreating into oblivion; whistling rockets that launch from a ground pad tube, multiple single balls of fire screaming as they shoot 100 feet up; hand-held four-foot long tubes that fire multiple starbursts 60 feet up, and larger, fancier verisons of starburst fireworks. At the high end of fireworks but not particularly expensive are the multiple, different-colored, starburst rockets that launch from a pad and shoot 60 to 150 feet up. A single starburst rocket launcher box, needing two people to carry and set up can setoff 10 to 30 individual starburst rockets and last 5 to 10 minutes or more.

Now image selling one of these 30 starburst rocket launchers to perhaps every 200th family in Chengdu. Let’s see-- that would be 60,000 rockets being launched from 7 PM to 1 PM: six hours of firepower. Perhaps I’m exaggerating but maybe I’m underestimating. This estimates out at 5,000 starbursts every minute within the city.

By 8.00 PM the fireworks launching activity was fairly constant. At ground level, all the city lights were on and many buildings’ internal lights were still on. A glittering city night as usual but with the sound of fireworks everywhere. Starbursts launched between highrises in narrow streets bounced off the building with the explosions echoing through the city canyonways. Some multicolor starbursts were launched from rooftops. The handheld smaller versions were launched from apartment balconies. We watched the occasional red-paper hot-air balloon drift off into the sky. Traffic on the street was light, mostly passenger cars, taxis, a few buses and only a handful of bicycles.


The business at our nearest fireworks tent was brisk, even at 9.00 PM. Some buyers were loading the two people boxes into their car, others just carried them across the street to launch next to the river. One salesmen in the tent smoked cigarettes the entire time. Other workers carried more large fireboxes from the truck in back out to the tent to replace the shrinking mountain of explosives.






From this view on the street, near the river, we watched green, red and blue starbursts launch up in front of the Shangri-La Hotel, east of the Bridge Restaurant. Some very attractive displays were framed by two black highrises on the west side of the river. At the top of the building, a lighted sign posted the time and temperature: 10.20 PM and 2 degrees centigrade.





The picture below is city in lights looking north, with the first ring road in the center crossing the Bin Jiang river.


By 11.30 PM the tempo of explosions picked up, by 11.50 PM the volume was up to a dull, almost constant roar with only those explosions next to you feeling loud. At midnight I literally could hear and see the difference- the explosion volume peaked, the entire city with its jagged roof-top silhouette, that was visible from my window was enveloped in a halo of colored fireworks spheres, like colored porcupine balls coating the city. The starburst spheres were so thick that they visually overlapped, filling my balcony view from east to west.

By 12.15 AM the volume clearly had peaked and started to recede. Although still strong by 12.30 AM, it was finally of lower volume. The smoke from all these explosives filled the air. Most of the buildings that were visible in the dark of night off in the distance could no longer be seen. I had a slight headache, my eyes and nose itched and the smell was obvious. I look down into the front carpark and watched two rocket launching sites just inside our complex entrance, with their curls of smoke drifting across the cars and street. The blast was so close that the first one caught me off guard, making me jump. By 12.40 AM the volume had decreased but was still constant. Even as I write now at 1.00 AM just inside the apartment, the pounding assault continues sporatically. These are the 50-70 feet fireworks. The bulk of the pretty stuff is the 60 to 120 feet rockets. But the blasting now only is at scattered locations,

The battle is over, the evil spirits never had a chance to approach Chengdu. The light and sound clearly kept the evil spirits away, adults exhausted, little kids over-stimulated and pets tense. A night never to forget.

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Even a ten-year old is fascinated by the sparklers.

Below is a red-paper hot air balloon just after being launched, as it drifts silently away.






To the left is the view looking south along the river at about 11 PM. The picture below is just from just south of the 1st ring road, along the river.




















The two pictures just below are the grand finale of chasing evil spirits: left picture is looking southeast and the right picture is looking southwest.





2009 Chinese New Year Celebration - Chengdu

QingCheng Front Mountain, January 18

It's been a bit difficult making the adjustment to being back in Chengdu, going from the brilliant sunny summer of Australia to fog and winter gloom. It has probably been between 45 and 55 most of the time, which I'm sure sounds rather wimpy to those of you who have experienced real winter, but it's an exceedingly damp chill that goes through my coat and pants and the soles of my shoes. It's still dark until 8:00a.m., which makes it difficult to get up and get going in the morning.

I' ll be heading out again on January 22nd for a three-week trip to the U.S. to visit my parents and friends, so I'm planning for that trip as well as trying to make things work for Mark, who will be here alone. I had hoped to have our ayi start working five days a week to help maintain the house for Mark, but she will be gone for at least two weeks for Chinese New Year.

Chinese New Year is January 26, but in terms of traveling and preparation, it is on par with our Christmas. Buildings and stores are festooned with red lanterns and other ornate paper or cloth decorations in red and gold. We've seen quite a number of carts [usually the bicycle-pedaled variety] selling these decorations. Mark gets a full week off from work, but it's difficult to know what he'll do with it because everyone is traveling at this time. He's giving our driver three days off, then is planning to go off somewhere to hike for several days. I was sorry to leave him for this week, but there was not enough time afterwards to make my trip and be back in time for the Chinese course I plan to take.

Since this was our last weekend together for a while, I told Mark I'd go hiking with him on Sunday, though it was every bit as foggy and cold as the rest of the week. It was barely light when we set off at 8:00 a.m. At one point the fog got so bad on the expressway that our driver pulled over and asked if it would be all right to take another road. We agreed.

We had driven by the front entrance to QingCheng Mountain on our trips to the back mountain, but we had not gone to the visitors' area. As with many of the parks we have visited, the entrance fee is quite high (90 yuan, about $13.50 per person), but there are substantial discounts for Chinese senior citizens, students, and groups. We presented our tickets at the entry arch, then walked up the broad paved sidewalk and steps, between two tall trees for which there is a legend of star-crossed lovers. A small plaza holds the usual assortment of food and souvenir vendors. The place definitely had an off-season look to it; we were almost the only visitors in this part of the park.

When the trail branched, we first went to the right, the direction for a ferry across a lake and the cable car. The lake had been drained, probably as a result of the earthquake, and the ferry was resting on the dry bottom. A walk had been erected over the lake bed to reach the bottom of the cable car. We could see that the cable car was not running - whether it was closed for repairs or for the seaon, we couldn't tell - so we went back to try the main walking path to the left.

The path was in good condition with bilingual sign posts at most of the branches. Unfortunately, these signs did not indicate our current location, so they were not as useful as they could have been. We went up hundreds of steps, through several temples, and past numerous pagodas designed for resting and enjoying the view. Things had cleared up, and we were warming up - off came our coats and gloves. After about two and a half hours, we reached the Shangqing Palace, a large temple near one of the mountain peaks. There were several dozen people there - men smoking in the main courtyards, little boys playing, a few women in high-heeled boots which would not have been my preferred footware for the trek. I could imagine the place in summer filled with people.

We passed and were passed by one boisterous group of young people having a picnic at one of the rest stops. Except for that, we ran into relatively few people along the path. It was much quicker going down - in a little over an hour we were back at the car.

On the lower part of the trail on the way up we heard flute music, which seemed to be piped in. While we enjoyed the relative quiet on the way up, we joked about hearing the music again on the way down. First we heard some Chinese opera - several women were singing as their small group climbed the trail. As they passed us, one of them directed her singing at us in a friendly but cocky sort of way. We smiled. A short time later we heard the flute music. An older man was walking slowly down the trail playing a folk flute, whose rich, mesmerizing sound filled the area between the mountain slopes. He paid no attention as we walked by.

We had only hiked for about four hours, but we were tired and sleepy on the way back. I was quite sweaty from the hike, so my back was a bit cold. We arrived back in Chengdu at about 4:00, so Joe asked if we wanted to stop at Carrefour. Our cupboard at home was a bit bare, so we agreed.

There was a traffic jam on the road outside of Carrefour, so Joe let us out so we could shop while he made his way into the parking lot. I'm used to entering from the parking garage; the pedestrian entrance is a bit of a maze past smaller shops to the main store entrance. There were hundreds of people milling around, but we were able to get the the entrance without too much problem. The entrance is on the dry goods floor, so we had to walk past all the coats and sheets and slippers and New Year specials to the escalator on the opposite side. The food level was crowded as well, but we were able to get over to the bakery in the back. There are special areas where different snack foods are prepared. We headed to a large station (about 16 feet square) where women were preparing dumplings and steamed filled buns. There wasn't a line there, so we selected some snacks we hadn't tried before, including a large burrito-shaped wrap with a spring onion filling. For vegetables we selected some that had been packed and pre-priced - otherwise, we would have to take the vegetables to the weighing station, which can be a bit of a free-for-all.

Then we looked at the check-out lines. Each one of them - perhaps a dozen total - stretched half-way back the entire store, perhaps forty people per line, many with large carts of items. Had we looked at the lines first, I think we would have left immediately, but since we had requested items from the "deli", we felt obligated to stay. Progress was slow, but orderly. Our line had started by the vegetables, then went through the fresh fish area, where we had a leisurely look at piles of fresh squid. A couple of 10(?)-year-old boys were amusing themselves playing with the squids' eyeballs. We saw a four(?)-year-old boy using a net to try to catch one of the fish swimming in a large tank. No parent or concerned store employee seemed to be around. He finally caught a fish, held it in his hands for a few seconds as it flopped around, then returned it to the adjacent tank. He continued this game for quite a while before his father came to get him.

A barker in the nearby meat market was using a loudspeaker to announce his specials. One woman was going through a bin of pork bones (for soup), carefully selected several to be weighed and priced. We saw another woman washing her hands in one of the fish tanks.

Eventually we saw Joe looking frantically in from the other side of the check-out counters. We waved, and he saw us. At that point, I expected him to go off someplace for a while, but he stood there the entire time. It took well over an hour and a half before we finally made it to the check-out counter. I went off a few times - got some tofu and some oranges and mandarins. I was tempted to get some cheese, but I would have had to cut through two lines to get over there, and it didn't seem worth the effort. Mark stayed in line the whole time. At one point a store clerk brought in a set of plastic baskets with wheels and a pull-up handle. Our hand baskets was getting a bit heavy, so we made an exchange. We saw baskets abandoned by other shoppers who decided they couldn't wait so long. But finally we made it - all for about $10 worth of groceries!

I don't know how much of the problem was the normal everyone who works doing the week doing their shopping and how much was in preparation for the New Year, but I think that my trips to Carrefour from now on will be planned for weekday mornings, when the population density is a bit more manageable.

At least now Mark and I have our benchmark waiting-in-line experience. Maybe the lines in the U.S. won't seem so bad any more.

Three Weeks in Australia

One of the perks of being in China is that we can fly to Australia without jet lag. We had lived in Perth from 2000-2003 and had last been there in 2005, so it was time to go back and visit friends and familiar places. We left the winter gloom of Chengdu on Dec. 20 and arrived in Perth for the summer solstice. The weather the first week was perfect - sunny but still with a hint of coolness. The last two weeks were hot, but not enough so to keep us from enjoying ourselves.

We spent the first two weeks in Perth itself visiting friends, walking in Kings Park [pictured] , Bold Park [lots of lizards out sunning themselves], Lake Monger, exploring our old neighborhood and downtown Perth, eating good bread and cheese, and Turkish wraps (The Istanbul Kitchen on Fitzgerald Street, a small family-owned place that makes its own bread, is one of our favorite places.) We hung out with Joan and Shelly H. [pictured] for a few days, talking and eating great food, including Joan's yummy chocolate candies. We had a picnic and saw an outdoor movie at the UWA campus with Joan and David M. - the evenings in Perth are perfect for this sort of thing. We had two wonderful meals with Suzanne and John R. - John is Mark's old rock-collecting mate. We spent a delightful afternoon with Wendy and Ari A. at their home in Fremantle, which included going to a free outdoor concert under the trees.

We drove down to Albany, where we spent three days hiking. Albany is situated in a spectacular site between Mt Clarence and Mt. Melville, overlooking Princess Royal Harbour, a large inlet off of King George Sound. Within town, we took shorter walks on the mountains overlooking the town and along the white sand beaches. We took a long hike on the Mount Martin Regional Botanic Park Walk Trail. We had the trail to ourselves, except for a large goanna that stayed on the path long enough for Mark to take some good pictures. The trail was rugged and somewhat overgrown, but we had some good views of the King George Sound. The far end of the trail took us to Voyager Park, a white sand beach across from the popular swimming area at Emu Point. There is no way to drive to Voyager Park, but several people had come over by boat to swim. Mark and I emerged onto the beach in our long pants and long sleeves (to protect against the sun), leather hats and fly nets, rather different creatures from the swim-suit-clad people lying on the beach. Then we had the long trek back. At the car I changed into shorts, and Mark and I walked over to Ledge Beach, which shares the parking lot with the botainc park, and waded in the waves. But the one trek we really wanted to do was Bald Head Walk on Flinders Peninsula. Three years ago we had gone just far enough to sit at a high point and watch two whales in the Southern Ocean. This was not whale season, but we got spectacular views of beaches, the sea, and looking back toward mainland.

We then drove a short ways inland to the small town of Mt. Barker, where we stayed for two nights while we hiked in the Porongurups and the Sterling Mountain Range. The Porongurups are a small remnant of an ancient mountain range rising out of the plain. Still, they provide a good workout and great views. We took a trail over three peaks, then took a shorter, steeper trail up Devil's Slide - 30% grade much of the way. It was a bit of a struggle for me, but the view from the bald granite top was great.

Mark wanted us to climb up Toolbrunup, one of the more challenging peaks in the Sterlings. However, when we got to the bottom of our second boulder field, I tolk Mark that he could go on alone. He made it to the summit and back in slightly more than an hour. He said it was an incredible climb, but regretted that the summit was socked in with fog, so he didn't get a view. By the time we made it back down to the car, the peak was bathed in sunlight.

At the visitors' center, there was a display of work by local potters. I bought a three-piece work by Leslie Hone entitled "Forest Folk" - two whimsical characters playing cards.