Happy Chinese New Year!

Well, our New Year celebration is long over, but the Chinese are just gearing up for their biggest festival of the year. Just as Americans would consider Christmas our number one holiday with it being not just one day but an entire season, the Chinese have the lunar New Year (also called Spring Festival). The official New Year's day is January 26th this year, but as the date gets closer we hear fireworks pretty much every night and firecrackers during the day. The stores are packed with shoppers buying gifts, candy, and cleaning products (it is tradition to do a thorough house-cleaning before the holiday).

The celebrations start on the day of the first new moon of the new year when families come together to share a meal. This is also the biggest travel holiday in China. For many of the migrant workers who come to find work in the cities, it is the only time all year that they get to go back to the countryside to see their families. It all ends 15 days later with the full moon when they have a lantern festival with children carrying lanterns in a parade. All the days in between are designated for visits to various family members, friends, and temples to pray for good fortune and health in the coming year.

On December 26th all the Christmas decorations disappeared from town being replaced by red and gold banners, blooming azaleas (to represent rebirth and new growth), potted tangerine trees (a symbol of abundant happiness), and fish made out of embroidered red silk hung on front doors (see photo above). The Chinese word for fish (yu) is similar to the word for abundance so it symbolizes the hope for prosperity and many blessings in the coming year.

As with all holiday celebrations all over the world, food plays an important role in the festivities. For the Chinese, many of the foods selected are representative of various wishes for the new year: whole fish for togetherness and abundance, a whole chicken (with head and feet) for completeness, dried bean curd which is a homonym for wealth and happiness, etc. Noodles are prepared and eaten without breaking them to ensure long life. Dumplings, although a pretty typical meal any day of the year, are also eaten duing this holiday as dumplings are shaped to look like the ancient Chinese coins.

I may complain about Christmas being so commercial in the US, but it seems to me that in the Chinese customs, there is a lot of talk about money. Sure, I suppose "prosperity" could refer to non-material wealth as well - but there is plenty of mention of cold, hard cash. For the kids on Chinese New Year, their parents and relatives hand out red envelopes with money called hong bao.

I mentioned the cleaning before. One of the reasons to get all of your cleaning done before New Year's day is because it is unlucky to sweep for the first 5 days of the celebrations - the superstition being that you will sweep all of your good luck for the new year out the door. On New Year's day there is also to be no disparaging words or bad language and definitely no talk of death. There is also a belief that if you cry on new year's day, you will cry all year so the kids can get away with a lot of mischief since their parents don't want to scold them and risk making them cry. Hmmm...some cash and trouble-making with impunity vs. Santa Claus...it's a tough call.

This year is the year of the Ox, so any babies born this year are expected to be generally calm, patient, and hardworking. But on the down side they can also be stubborn and narrow-minded. Probably not a bad year to have a kid. You are an ox if you were born in 1949, 1961, 1973, 1985, or 1997.

So Happy Lunar New Year everyone! Hope it's a prosperous one!

Culture Shock

Since moving to Shanghai six months ago, it’s been a whirlwind of getting settled: meeting new people, navigating the grocery stores, dealing with a new house and new school. So I haven’t had much time to really focus on this new culture I’ve been dropped into until now. There is something about this move that feels different than the move to Spain. I guess even though Spain was a different country, its culture was still closer to American than here in China. Asia is just a whole different ball game.

Of course there are the obvious things: the food, the language, the smells! But we have our rather large expat bubble in which to live our day-to-day. Lots of American food, restaurants, English-language books and services (much more than in Spain). We live in a resort-like neighborhood with lots of perks we never had at home. In so many ways we are actually pretty spoiled here and yet somehow it just feels different and it wasn’t always clear why until I got to take a step back and look at it from a distance.

We went away to Hong Kong over the Christmas break. Before our trip, whenever I told someone where we were going, they would sigh and say, “Oh, you’ll love Hong Kong.” This kind of surprised me because I always thought of Hong Kong as a big, crowded concrete jungle (I’m not much of a city person). And it is still China, after all, how refreshing could it be?

Well first off, it was more of a mix of Chinese and western cultures. Our perfectly lovely hotel was on “Dried Seafood Street” and stunk as much as any street corner in downtown Shanghai. On Lantau Island, not 200 yards from the remote Po Lin monastery (right under the giant Buddha) was a 7-Eleven convenience store. At Ocean Park we went to a stand where you could buy either a sno-cone or fried squid legs (the squid legs were far more popular, by the way).

But the thing that struck me, and I believe what appealed to my fellow expats, was that it was just so….civilized. People smiled and said please and thank you. They held open doors and never pushed or cut in line. There is a general courtesy and orderliness which is sorely lacking in the rest of the country.

It is actually hard for me to say this because I have always considered myself to be very respectful of other cultures and I hate to generalize. I try to put aside my own upbringing and look at life from someone else’s point of view. And China has had a rough time of it. A misguided and corrupt communist rule and the whole Cultural Revolution has certainly left its scars and led to a mentality of every man for himself. Yes, the country has had unprecedented economic growth in recent years, but old habits die hard.

So let’s not call this a criticism of the Chinese people, merely an observation. I think the best way to describe it is a basic lack of manners. It’s not that they are intentionally trying to be rude when they nose around in my grocery cart while waiting in the check-out line, or stare right at my face for an uncomfortably long time. Hacking and spitting in the street is perfectly acceptable (watch where you step!) as is shouting at perfect strangers in public over minor disputes.

There is a general lack of respect for any kind of order (as I said, it’s every man for himself) and with so many people, the end result is chaos. In the produce section of the grocery store you have to go to a station in the middle to weigh your purchases before going to the checkout. Well, of course, no one waits in a line, so you just have to shove your way in with the rest of them because if you try to wait your turn, you will never get served. More than once I have just dropped by bag of apples on the counter and walked away because it just got so bad and I couldn’t deal with the yelling and pushing.

The driving is also a good example. The rule of the road seems to be “if I can get there first, than I have the right of way”. Doesn’t matter who is supposed to yield, as long as you think the other driver can slam on his brakes and stop fast enough to avoid an accident, then you get to go first. And if you are a pedestrian, don’t step out into a crosswalk thinking the cars will stop for you because, believe me, they won’t.

It’s really interesting to see a culture that evolved completely separately from our own, to see that even though human nature may be the same, it can develop in a completely different direction. But interesting or not, some days it can be very exhausting, so I head back to my bubble for a while, rest up, and do it again another day.