Year of the Pig

My Blogger account is broken! I tried to upgrade it to a newer version, but apparently Blogger has decided that old version worked too well and this needed to be remedied. I was barely able to post this...then again, I was able to post this.

I'm not sure if you all knew this, but China is currently engaged in a week long celebration of the new year. It's the year of the Pig, which is my year actually, and everyone keeps telling me that I will be lucky. The streets are plastered with pig paraphenalia, including pig balloons, pig outfits for children, and pig posters on every wall. My personal favorite are t-shirts worn by teens that try to make this tradition "cool" by featuring Hip-Hop pigs.

This holiday is actually a lot like the 4th of July. It's very family centric and revolves primarily around food. Also, there are more fireworks involved than you could ever imagine. Instead of public showings, every family puts on their own fireworks display. These shows might not be as grandious as the American version, but this measurment is overshadowed by the fact that the bombs bursting in air are bursting ten feet away from you. It's hard to explain, but it feels both spectacular and insane to roll up to any old corner store in China, spend less than 5 dollars, and walk away with enough firepower to send you to prison in most countries.

Also, you have to remember that massive amounts of fireworks are being launched by hundreds of families surrounding you. It honestly reminds me of World War II movies I've seen, where a platoon is marching during the night. While they themselves are in a safe zone, the night sky is lit up by a massive bombing campaign many miles away. In China, I stand outside and hear pops and bangs from unknown locations and the sky flashes like a strobe light. Words fail me as usual.

Three paragraphs devoted to fireworks? You bet your sweet ass! I've got to talk about how dangerous this all is! The first night of the New Year celebration, Beijing reported ungodly numbers of firework related hospital visits. I can almost garuntee you this is due to how casual everyone is with the fireworks and how drunk everyone gets. I've seen 6 year olds (6 YEAR OLDS) with lighters, throwin heavy hitting crackers into the air, moments before they explode. I myself almost blew my hand off. I was launching balls of fire into the sky by holding onto a tube the size of a rolled up poster. We had never used this particular cannon before, so we didn't know what happened when the the fire balls ran out. After 10 balls lit up the sky, making a "Dung-Thwap" noise as they exited the barrel, the tube went silent. I assumed this meant that the show was over, but what it actually meant was that the fire ball failed to project out of the tube. The next thing I knew, red sparks shot all around me, a huge bang left me deaf, and my hand went completely numb. It took me close to 4 whole seconds before I realized that I still had a hand and another 5 minutes before I could safely say that no significant damage had been done. I hope you find this firework talk interesting, because if you don't, I probably sound a huge nerd.

I'm in Xi'an now. It's not a well known city outside of China, but it's probably the third or fourth most prominent city in China. What really makes this a special city is that it retained much of its original architecture after the Communist revolution. I'll try to show you some pictures, but Xi'an looks the way I imagined a Chinese city "should" look like. Also, it's home to the Terracotta Warriors, which I'm going to see tomorrow.

I'm staying at the COOLEST youth hostel. One of the teachers I'm traveling with used to work here, so the owners have really taken us in. This means we have lots of new friends to talk to and all the free alcohol we can handle. Hostels are amazing in China. Everyone chats with everyone and there's always something new to raise your glass to. An old woman kissed me last night. That doesn't really follow the flow of this paragraph, but it needed to be said.

Peace, peace.

Tommy