The Ox Comes Thundering In

If you ever start to feel like you’ve seen so much that nothing really impresses anymore, come to Shanghai for the midnight celebration of the Lunar New Year. (Spring Festival, as it’s called here) If it doesn’t excite you, ready the defibrillator.

The celebration started a day early for us. Around ten or eleven the night before the big night the compound guards launched a few rounds of fireworks. They were just impatient and having fun. It was nothing more than a sample, a minute taste, of the spectacle to come. Excited in our ignorance, we lay some cushions in our bay window and huddled under some blankets, bracing ourselves against the cold glass. Had we known what was to come, we would’ve just trimmed our fingernails or organized our sweater drawers instead.

The next day, we had dinner and started to wash our dishes. But as soon as the sun set, our neighbors began to light off fireworks. We would rush from what we were doing to catch a glimpse, only too often to find them done by the time we reached the right room and window. By about seven, there were enough fireworks that the booms became incessant. After twenty minutes of zipping about from room to room to catch the best view, the sight started to feel monotonous and we went about our night-time routine. I showered, picked up dirty clothes, and scrubbed the floor, all with an explosive soundtrack in the background. At eight, we made some dessert and watched the CCTV “Spring Festival Gala” on T.V. (More on that another day) Around nine, three boxes of mortars, each spaced a block apart were going off on a street parallel to our building. We watched for a while, but decided we were pretty cold in the corner room and retreated to the bedroom. By ten, we were so jaded we would peek out at fireworks only from our bedroom, and only if they were particularly close. Around eleven, with the peppering of sound in the background, my wife fell soundly asleep. We joked about her ability to sleep through anything. She only lasted about thirty-five minutes.

I was working on my computer and didn’t notice at first, until a particularly close set of sharp firecrackers sent my eyes to the clock. I knew that midnight was said to be something special; it was around 11:20 and I returned to my work. Then the booming started in earnest, and I looked out the window and saw a complex a mile away beginning to launch some larger fireworks. Across the ensuing minutes, they come closer and louder. By 11:40, the crescendo was unmistakable and a glance out the window revealed three mortars firing at once. My wife woke up and I started trying to convince her to go outside. Like instruments joining the melody of some triumphant symphony, every moment brought another firing to the array of sight and sound. Each minute seemed to compound with explosions in a new range or register. By 11:50, there were six, seven, eight distinct displays occurring simultaneously. Greens, blues, reds and whites lit the sky near and far. Whistles, pops, bangs, booms, sizzles, resounded with precisely what they were: a percussion section composed entirely of explosives, ignited independently by hundreds of individuals, their sound somehow unified only by their steadily increasing numbers. By 11:56, we headed out to our balcony.

Outside, the symphony had become a maelstrom, a hurricane of sight and sound. Within and beyond our complex, there were more fireworks exploding than we could possibly witness. Each slight turn of the head revealed at least a half-dozen different blossoms of fire. Below us, residents were lighting off strings of firecrackers that seemed to combine into an endless stream of pops. As midnight approached, the fury of the fireworks grew impossibly more intense until it seemed that every building near and far was bathed in showers of color. Fireworks fit to entertain whole cities were being launched between buildings not thirty yards apart. Embers would collide with the side of our twenty story towers and bounce or slide down. Shorter buildings in the distance were surrounded by streams of colored fire.

Soon, we saw a mortar being set up directly below our balcony and scurried inside for cover. We dashed from room to room, seeing and feeling ourselves immersed in the explosions going on above, below, near and far. Our office, the very corner room with the best windows, presented a dizzying array of spectacles. No sooner had we settled there, than a shower of sparks and explosions right outside our window drew us back to the bedroom. As we lay on our bay window shelf, the fireworks were exploding not ten feet above us, so bright as to seem dangerous just to watch.

Once they finished, we again found ourselves running from room to room to catch the best displays. Smoke leaked into our sealed apartment and seemed to envelope the city outside. By 12:15, the decrescendo had begun. Booms near and far, high and low began to fall away, never concluding. One lone resident, with a simply massive cannon of sparks, smoke and sound, offered something of a finale, sending his loudest of booms out across the neighborhood every minute or two. Even now, as I write this two hours later, the fireworks are still echoing on. Every four or five minutes a lone series of booms or a string of pops splits the night.

Happy New Year!

CHANGED

As our president said it, change has come to America. Change has come for Americans the world over. Even those Americans staying up until 2AM, watching a tiny four-inch diagonal video feed on their computer screen, sitting at a cold table in Shanghai, China.

I am changed because for the first time in my adult life, I can take pride in who I am and where I am from. Living abroad, amongst students and teachers from dozens of countries, I have never had a greater sense of being an American. Yet I have also been made ever more fully aware of the complete idiocy of our recent policies and behaviors. Within America, all the grand divisions and minute sub-denominations of our society seem so pressing. Abroad, you are either American or you are not. I am American, like it or not. For eight long years, I have not liked it.

Yet, tonight –or this morning— we have again put a man on the moon. I stayed up tonight because witnessing a person of color take the oath of office is a moment no less awe-inspiring than that of the Apollo mission. It is an event that must been seen live to be truly appreciated and celebrated. It is, in fact, more tremendous than a moon landing. This time our national triumph was not earned by the strength of our science nor the prowess of our industry but by the simple power of our vote, the private decision of tens of millions of ordinary individuals. More than any other attainment in our history, this is a victory of the American people.

I am changed by the chance to take part in that victory. I am changed by the faith it renews in our democracy, the hope and pride it reconnects to our country's name. I am changed by the acceptance of what it means for "my people," both in this generation and every one to follow. Most of all, I am changed by the new belief that service rendered in the name of American society will not be futile strokes against a tide of corruption and everlasting injustice. Led by a president we believe in, we can believe in what we do.

We have made real progress today. America has changed.

Back to the Blogosphere II

About two months ago, I seized my position as a “Technology Integration Specialist” and vigorously shook it until a real, full-time job fell out. It made me feel better about myself, but also made me tired, unreflective, and an obviously poor blogger. This quarter, I’m in pursuit of the happy medium.

I’m also in pursuit of a new voice for this blog, one that allows me to write about what I see and experience here without feeling like I need to fully understand it. Because I don’t, and that leaves me feeling unable to write about it. I want to move towards less analysis or "reflection," and more simple recording. Let me know what you think.

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Our little park, located across the street and artistically rendered in modern gray and black stone with the occasional interruption of greenery, keeps growing, not in size, but in detail and complexity. We watched it take shape over the fall, open in the early winter, and now it thrives with activity. A troupe of women dance in its single, large open space each morning and night. At first I thought they were practicing for the Spring Festival, but I’ve realized they are just a fitness class convened without instructor or gym. Someone brings the boombox and away they go. My wife likes to scour the weekend crowds for new peddlers, she’s spied a balloon man, and is on the look out for a cotton candy hawker or a kite seller. I watch the guard. I’ve decided he’s there to keep the park safe from the people, rather than the other way around. At first he just had to wander the three paths, but eventually they finished a wooden bench under the concrete gazebo, atop the tiny park’s tiny hill. Now he has a small guardhouse, which even at the size of a porta-potty is too big for the park. I’ve noticed his guardhouse recently gained a light. I stroll by each day looking to see if they’ve added a T.V. or heater.

We walked by an entire old block that was knocked down, save for a long wall and two single-room shops, about a hundred yards apart. They lie on the edge of the empty block like the crust and crumbs left on the plate of some giant, too stuffed to finish his meal. Ignoring the earth-movers behind them, the ceiling of rags above them, the scattered remains around them, the stores carry on, one selling fruit the other newspapers and magazines. A ragged edge of bricks on all lines of their roof makes it clear that these shops were once wholly surrounded by others, above, behind, below and aside, already eaten away. I wonder whether they are the remnants allowed to continue, to nominally satisfy the terms of a renovation, or if they are merely the last to go, the lone hold outs against such obvious inevitability.

We are illiterate here and unnervingly at ease with it. There are signs everywhere that we cannot read and simply pass on by. Big red banners with yellow letters, strewn across courtyards. Flashing orange words on an LED screen just inside our complex. Highly official looking proclamations tacked to a board in our lobby. These letters have red stars and stamps. All that’s clear is the dates. There are always dates in the body, sometimes days and sometimes years. 1939 made an appearance on a new one today. We assume that if they were important dates, “Untented Fumigation Next Wednesday” or “Mass Eviction of Foreigners by Friday!” someone, somehow would tell us So we walk by, get in the elevator and go home.

Karaoke lulls me to sleep now. About six weeks ago someone, somewhere in my neighborhood purchased a karaoke machine and high-powered stereo. I don’t know if it’s an illicit karaoke parlor or an extreme enthusiast, but he lights it up around eleven, always a he, and carries on until anywhere from twelve to one-thirty. The sound is muted enough to take on an almost humming characteristic. No words, just a stream of “yuhs” emanate up through the floorboards.