Happy Niu Year!

I certainly was not preparing to write about the Chinese New Year at 8 in the morning, not after a night spent chasing fireworks around town until two booming in the Niu year (Niu =牛, which means ox, or cow.) Add in jet lag from arriving here in Beijing two days ago, and you could understand why I’d be excited about getting a real nice night’s sleep. I should have known.
It’s hard to describe the sound, though I’m sure any one reading this has heard fireworks. Imagine the end of a gigantic fireworks display, except you’re in four corners Arizona and each state has their own display for their respective corner. Add in the “cracklers,” which are as to our little cracklers like a tarantula is to a picture of a spider drawn by a four-year-old, and you have a foothold. Loud, continuous. Our fireworks displays have the pace of moderate rock, with some climaxes of sixteen notes on the snare drum. This is more like jungle trance: 240bpm, and all sixteenth notes, directly next to your apartment building, which is a concrete wall in a giant sound rebounding maze. In war, sitting under a tin roof in a furious hail, while shots from automatic rifles scream around you mixed in with an occasional chorus of mortar fire, you would hear that same mix of percussion, but the anxiety would likely not give you space to listen, or hear.
Hear, as opposed to see, being operative. Despite the night bringing out all varieties of exploding colored lights and streaming jets of sparks, in the day, it’s all about the noise. Vaguely, and I don’t at the moment of writing have the internet so I will not confirm this, I remember that fireworks in the superstitious mythos that is the Chinese motivation for doing all things are supposed to frighten off evil demons, and so their powers are needed the most at the end of the old/beginning of the new year, I suppose because demons have off from work during this time as well and are disposed otherwise at their offices. Most of the fireworks that go off during the day are either the aforementioned cracklers, or large M-80 style noisemakers, which is not to say they are not present during the night, merely that any association of “fireworks,” with “pretty,” or “majestic,” is purely a nighttime phenomenon.
As is the association of “fireworks,” with “children.” While kids certainly enjoy the fireworks, they’re not setting them off. Most of what I have seen in the last two days of setting off fireworks has been single men, by themselves, usually in their forties or beyond. It’s a little creepy, their approach to the task eerily robotic. But that is not to say there is nothing childlike about it.
In fact, one of the greatest things about being here at this time is the sense of wonder and simple joy on people’s faces, from the young to the old, as they watch and hear fireworks blast off all around them. It is as if the stodgy no-fun discipline of the rest of the Chinese year were simply a show, and the time off (just about everyone has a week off, at least) and periodic unexpectable bursts of sound act as just enough of a counterweight to keep everyone aware that life is fun, the burst of sound behind a young woman making her grasp for her ears in her winter coat and turn her beaming laughing face towards her companion, blurting out something like “oh that surprised me!” If this seems like an extreme reminder, it should only go to hint at what the other 360 days of the year are like.
There is, after all, a reason this is a tradition held so strongly. If (and I think this is true) the more rigid a society is, the more unflinching its rituals must be honored, each holding up its own inch of the society, then the Chinese adherence to tradition becomes clearer. I realized this week an interesting way of putting the difference between American and Chinese culture. In America, if we say, “it’s just a tradition,” we mean that there’s no solid reason to keep doing it, and if for one or another reason, we have to or want to do something else, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a tradition, after all. In China, “it’s just a tradition” means, “even though no one knows why we do it this way, this is the way it is done, so it is how we must do it.” This became clear for me when I asked my girlfriend why it’s so important to eat dumplings the first day of the New Year, (and noodles the second, and on and on…that’s how specific some of these are) and she responded, “I don’t know, it’s just a tradition.” There’s a great pride in the Chinese traditions, and the sense that this is what brings Chinese together as a people, something that not only creates but also in a sense is their cultural identity. Evangelical Christians have the literal word of God in the Bible; this is what gives them their identity. But the Chinese have only Chinese-ness, and so all of these rituals, all of the history, the shared sense of hard work and study as children, and the reverence for their ancestors come together to create the sense of identity. While all these internal factors are true for Evangelicals as well, at least they can point to the book to cover it all up. Chinese only have this, which is likely a factor making them so aware of the boundaries between “us,” and “them.” You’re either Chinese, or you’ll never be, and will never understand. (Because you don’t eat dumplings on the New Year?)
There’s another interesting contrast between our two societies I have noticed but have not so far been able to find an example for: the difference in degrees and places of freedom that society allows. One might think that China and America are simply at two ends of a spectrum, Americans being more or less “free,” and Chinese not, but this is a gross over-simplification. Exhibit A: in the public square last night, there were probably 2-3 thousand people, all setting off fireworks, and very very few cops, or authorities of any kind. In the square, it was absolute anarchy, which is not to say chaos, only that the crowd had its own logic. In the middle was a huge open space, around which people were gathered. Most of the fireworks were set off in the middle of the square, and all went well. It was all done privately, by the people. Juxtapose this to a fireworks display in America, where people aren’t involved in it at all, except as spectators. The point I’m trying to make is that while in America the range of activities allowed people (by society, I’m not exactly saying by law) is broader, there is almost always still a set of rules one must abide by. In China, the range for free activity is greatly circumscribed: 360 days of the year, there is no spring festival, and you can’t choose when to have off. However, within this circumscribed area, when allowed, you can do 100% as you please. I had noticed something similar when teaching in a primary school: between fifty- minute classes there is a ten minute break of complete chaos you’d never see in America, and students run as fast as they can wherever they’re going, unless it is with the whole class. In America, you don’t run in school, only on the playground. In America, if the students were allowed to go ape for ten minutes between classes they might never calm down. But, this is China. As soon as that class bell rings (actually a twenty second song) kids are in their seats, if not ready to learn, then at the least orderly. Again, I don’t quite have an explanation for this, other than to say perhaps it is the tradeoff for circumscribing free space so totally: within that space, freedom is also total. But they’re trained well: when the bell rings, kids are sitting, when the lights in the square went off (at 12:10) people began to filter out in droves.
Another fascinating social phenomenon is the yearly four-hour pageant, broadcast all over the world, and without commercial interruption, that precedes the 12 AM turn of the year (in a way it’s odd that they’re so westernly precise about the exact time the year turns when they are using the lunar calendar, but, such is modern China.) This year the theme was overtly a celebration of the last thirty years of economic reforms, which have brought the country great wealth. In this generally tame and traditional setting (one song featured the lyrics “Mao ZeDong has to lead us” over and over again…actually that may have been the Beijing pageant the next night, but same idea) where the comedy acts were snow-white and everything family friendly, one act stood out: a dance/rap routine featuring a man, a woman, and a ten-year old. It was overtly hip-hop inspired in fashion and in music, and it stuck out precisely because the older generations find the hip-hop fashions of the youngest generation revolting. Far from an embrace of hip-hop, however, this seemed to be far more a way of acknowledging the youth culture and bringing it in ever tighter into the fold of society, defusing any element of rebellion and individuality. It was, after all, only a display, lasting ten-minutes in a four hour program, a way for China to say, “don’t forget, kids, what’s underneath the adidas pants.” Oh, there was break dancing. But the kid was wearing a helmet.