This was taken just a few minutes from our apartment complex, along a 2-block stretch that some might call rundown. But the action here is way more interesting than in the spiffier areas.
That's the only photo for today, so now you'll have to use your imagination. Right after school today, I met Leah at the shop where she bought her scooter only a couple weeks ago. She's been plagued by battery charger problems for a few days, and this was her 3rd trip back to the shop in 3 days. The first day she thought there was something wrong with the charger, so she took it back and got a replacement. That didn't work, so the next day she got yet another charger, which did seem to work. Great, we thought the problem was solved. But this morning she discovered that someone seemed to have stolen her new charger from the bike/scooter parking area under our building and had left a bum charger in its place. So today we had get a new charger, this time paying for it because it wasn't the shop's problem. That's why I showed up: Leah didn't leave home this morning with enough cash for this. Now tonight it appeared that this 3rd replacement charger wasn't working, either, but when she wheeled over to the parking area under the next building, it did work. So we seem to have a power supply problem, as well as a security problem, and possibly a quality control problem, too. I'm afraid that my enthusiasm for scooter transport is fading. Give me my low tech bike any day.
On my way into our apartment building tonight, I saw that the red garland-y Christmas/New Year's tree that's been up in the middle of the plaza since early December was in the last stages of being taken down and packed away. Yesterday was the 15th day of Chinese New Year, the very last day. The Lantern Festival is a traditional celebration on the last day. Karen, the young Chinese teacher who shared a work area at school with me this week, said that the Lantern Festival isn't celebrated very much anymore. But when she was a young girl growing up in a small city several hours away from here, families would go to a nearby park on the Lantern Festival night. In the park hanging next to each lantern was a riddle, for example, asking the meaning of a written Chinese character. If a child answered the riddle correctly, s/he was given the lantern to keep. There would be food for sale in the park, such as round dumplings with a "smashed" bean filling, as she called it. The Lantern Festival is always on the night of a full moon, and the roundness of the moon as well as the round shape of dumplings and other foods symbolizes family continuity and togetherness. Karen also said that the weather in southern China changes around the time of the new year, as spring begins--that's why Chinese New Year is also called Spring Festival. Sure enough, the weather did change about a week ago. There's more humidity in the air, it's been cloudy for a week straight, and we've had several days with light rain, after nearly 4 months of very little precipitation. I'm remembering that last fall a Chinese person told me that February was her least favorite month because it's so gloomy. Now I understand.
I have one last Chinese New Year anecdote. Tonight about 10 I was walking home by way of the waterfront here on the apartment complex grounds. Suddenly fireworks began shooting up in the air, exploding away in colorful showers. I hadn't ever been so close to the actual staging of all these fireworks that we've been watching from our apartment window for the last few weeks and was curious to see how this all worked. There were a few dozen ordinary people standing around and a handful who seemed to be managing the display.
After a couple of minutes, a very agitated Anglo man appeared on the scene, waving his arms, and repeating a couple phrases in Chinese, which I took to mean something like "Chinese New Year is done!" Then he proceeded to rant in English: "You need to pack up and leave now! GO! Chinese New Year is over! I'm sick of this noise--this has been going on for 2 weeks and my family can't sleep--I haven't said anything until now, but last night was the end, the LAST night of Chinese New Year, so now I'm telling you that this is it, you are DONE! You don't live here, but I do! Go home! Take this stuff and leave now or I'm going to call the police!" Then he hurled an obscenity or two. But it didn't appear that any of the Chinese people standing around understood at all what he was saying. Which made him even angrier. He picked up one of the big boxes of unexploded fireworks, walked over to the fence at the water, and threw the whole thing in the bay. Then he strode back. "OK, what next? Do you hear me? You need to leave! NOW!" Everyone was still standing there, absolutely quiet. They probably thought this guy was deranged: it's Chinese New Year, after all--fireworks are how Chinese people celebrate--it's traditional--how can a normal person not understand that?
At this point I walked away. This was too ugly a scene for me. If this guy had an apartment right there facing the water, I can see how he'd be tired of the noise, which really is awfully loud. But this was a ridiculously ineffective way to get what he wanted, not to mention extremely patronizing. This was not a group of hoodlums and they themselves weren't raucous. I don't know how he could assume that none of them lived here in these apartments.
I was glad that, judging from this man's accent, he was most likely not an American. But still, this little scenario didn't do much to promote international relations between westerners and Chinese.
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