Christmas and New Year's

Happy New Year!!

Both Christmas and New Year's have passed most uneventfully in Lanzhou. But this doesn't mean they went by unnoticed by me. In fact, it would have been impossible for me to forget about Christmas because so many people asked me about it. What was I going to do? Was I very sad not to spend it with my family? Did I see that they were selling little stuffed santas in the supermarket? Most of the time, I took the time to explain that no, I didn't really mind missing Christmas. Even though Christmas is an important holiday in the US, I don't celebrate it because it's a Christian holiday and I'm not Christian. Even after explanation, these same people would wish me a Merry Christmas a few days later. Christmas is very much understood as a holiday from the west, a big part of which is the US. I just couldn't possibly not care about it.

And partly, they're right. It is a holiday for me -- it can't not be. At home, everything is closed that day and many many people are celebrating with family, thus forcing it to be spent in a way that distinguishes it from other days (e.g., at the movies and eating Chinese food). I sort of looked forward to not going through Christmas hassle for one year, but the interest from those around me made it stand out just as much. I must have been asked a hundred times about my plans for Christmas.

Christmas has come and gone. I didn't have class on the day, perhaps because of this seemingly set idea that foreigners observe Christmas (in fact more of the foreign students here are Muslim, I would guess). I went shopping, the absence of crowds rather striking (and pleasant). Then again, there is always a lot of advertising and selling going on here. I'm scared to even think about what a peak in these for Christmas would look like.

January 1, 2008. Wow!!!

Though the Chinese traditionally used a lunar calendar with a new year that falls around early February, they now refer to all dates (including historic, current, and dates of birth) using the solar calendar as we do. Therefore, I assumed that the signifance of the holiday would at least be on the same scale as back home. Wrong. I think schools were off today, but they start up again tomorrow. Walking around, it seemed that everything (notably excluding my gym) was open. Even more dramatically, last night there was little midnight activity. After asking a few Chinese friends and finding out that they had no intention of celebrating, I went to dinner with a group of schoolmates from Kazakhstan. It was a very big deal for them, and they were excited. Still, they couldn't muster up the celebratory atmosphere that a whole city - a whole country - in suspense could. I truly missed it. I passed the midnight hour in 'Tango Club,' one of the few night clubs in town. I think that half of my dormitory was there, plus a handful of Chinese. There was no countdown, or even any clock in sight. With a few minutes to go, I got scared they wouldn't even tell us when midnight came. To my my relief, with ten seconds to go, they did a brief countdown. There were cheers when we got to zero (almost exclusively from my counterparts) and the staff handed out little sparklers which we lit for another 10 seconds (adding to the already eye-stinging smoke inside the establishment from cigarettes, fog machines, and zero ventilation). There was an announcement to welcome the new year. That was it.

I didn't realize before how much I like these holidays to mark off the cycle of the year. Especially New Year's, which I hadn't expected ever to pass so unremarkably. Other holidays belong to a country or a religion, and I thought this one was pretty universal (I love watching the replays on TV from cities already in the new year while waiting in the US). I bet this will change - it probably already is in bigger, more westernized cities in China (see next post). I did enjoy talking to my family this morning, when I was well into 2008, as they counted down the last few hours of 2007. Of course the change in digit doesn't mean much, and if I went to sleep last night and woke up this morning without seeing it happen it wouldn't mean any less. It's just where we decide to etch the stick, but it gives order to our lives. We count in years and decades. The Chinese do too, but they also like to count in rounds of the zodiac. Though it technically won't start until Chinese New year in Feb, this year is the year of the rat -- my year. It's gonna be great!

-- cuz you have to believe -- this'll be my year --