Spending my First Spring Festival in China
Spending my First Spring Festival in China
The Spring Festival can be a lonely time for foreigners who don’t have family in China. I was lucky enough to be invited to travel from Beijing to Fushun, a small (by Chinese standards), northern city whose hallmarks hail purple polluted skies and blue tap water. This industrialized area is cold, with a special type of attitude from locals. In being dropped off at the train station, the conversation went as follows:
“Where are you going again?”
“Fushun”
“Oh, they love to fight there.”
Although I didn’t see any fights, I did see an old man running away as he was scolded for stepping on someone’s belongings. It was a comedic moment among the cheerful sound of fireworks.
We took the overnight train, and in leaving from the constantly crowded residential area of Shahe, it was eerily empty. This only happens for a few days each year, so I enjoyed it.
The train itself was crowded and narrow, with noisy older fellows cramping up the areas between cars, smoking and joking about how the train was too hot for them. I hadn’t taken an overnight train for a few years, so it brought a content sense of nostalgia for me as people slept half in the aisles. In twelve hours on this train, the evening was filled with people drinking and laughing, some sleeping. In the wee hours, the only ones who remained were those same old men, still smoking. I had eventually managed a nap, leaning against my companion with my boots sticking well out into the aisle, awoken by an old man yelling to get his cart by everyone. Near the end of the trip, it was eventually roomy enough to compose oneself to arrive, for which I was grateful.
We stepped out into the stream of the rest of the passengers returning home and the conductor cheerfully beamed, “Hello!” in English. People sure weren’t shy here. He took my ticket and we stepped into the surprisingly clear street, bright and chilly, but acceptable, and as the week went on, it only grew increasingly cold and polluted.
It encompasses in a way the style of northern China that our taxi driver blasted strange European remixes over the purple and gold fake DC seat covers on which we sat. Each and every storefront we passed was so coldly shuttered save for a few 24-hour convenience stores and one local market. Our driver drove across the sidewalk to get us as close as possible to where we needed to be. We settled in and once we’d had a nap from our sleepless overnight train ride, we headed out.
I had little knowledge of Chinese New Year outside of the obvious fireworks and red packets full of lucky money, exchanging gifts and meals with family. Chinese New Year has been referred to as Thanksgiving and Christmas combined, but it’s New Year on top of that! It’s no wonder this holiday leaves the big cities desolate with everyone returning home. In any case, once we’d wandered a while, no family of our own able to celebrate with us, I saw more fireworks than I’d thought possible, but there were also people at the end of every street burning papers. This had been explained to me as people burning money to send to their ancestors in the afterlife, and sure enough, upon closer inspection, the papers burned were golden shiny boats or fake 100 yuan notes.
The smells were that of gunpowder and paper ash, which was somehow comforting as we walked those cold streets. There were several firework stalls, and as someone who had hardly seen one since childhood (and they were heavily regulated when I had), I had to say that the huge sticks of gunpowder along with old favorites lining busy city streets was not a surprise, but a pleasant thing to explore nonetheless. No Snakes here! These were proper fireworks, all right in the middle of the city. The last time I was around such unregulated fireworks was in Los Angeles on the Fourth of July and they were illegal. It was a lot scarier, with a lot more people pointing them at cars and other people, generally at the street rather than the air. It didn’t seem too scary in Fushun, or maybe I’ve grown up a lot. Still, we were mischievous children all over again, and admittedly, we accidentally set a couch on fire with them. We had previously put them on a chair, which was relatively unharmed, but miraculously, the couch practically exploded into flames. Other mischievous children put fireworks in manhole covers, causing holes and cracks in them on occasion.
The one market open was playing the New Year programming, those special televised events that happen during the holidays that everyone has on but no one watches. It was on as we ate our dumplings in the midst of thousands of noisy fireworks. We had a quaint night celebrating in our own way and wandering around the city.
I have never seen so many lights as I have in Fushun, every building blaring against the others. For some reason, I had the idea that it was to combat the harsh coldness, and in a way, it worked to make me feel warmer. We continued to explore, including the marketplace, which was empty the day prior, but thereafter filled to the brim with bustling customers among such delicacies as live black chickens, silkworm larvae, and perhaps not as interesting, tofu so freshly made it was still warm after they cut us off a hunk and tossed it in a bag. This was my first real experience with the street markets of China, and boy was it an interesting one. My favorite part is always the fruits, so colorful and always with something I’ve never seen before coming from an entirely different part of the planet. They are often cut open on top of a pile of uncut fruit to entice customers, and it always works to catch my eye. I bought many oranges, as it’s my favorite thing to snack on, while my companion bought black pears, a type of pear that has been aged, covered in leaky, sugary, black skin.
We ate lots of Korean and Korean/Chinese food, which was a nice change, and a refreshing treat to eat well-made kimchi again. The food was one of the most interesting parts of traveling outside of Beijing. There are so many interesting culinary points in China, all of them different depending on what city you visit. I’m excited to travel within China more to see what different areas have to offer, as this country is very proud of its cuisine.
We finished up our trip by touring the small city, having gone from mall arcade gaming to exploring around the government parks and buildings along with the ice park on the river. It was a fun time full of strange nostalgia considering I’d never been there before. It finally hit me that I spent my first holiday away from home.
While I wouldn’t recommend venturing out this way as a tourist for no reason, it was a nice trip that brought me closer to China in a way, and definitely closer to the Korean-Chinese minority, giving it a sort of context compared to Beijing. We turned far more heads than typical, and it was a fun experience that I wouldn’t trade for the 12-hour overnight train ride it took to get there.
*This was originally written July 18, 2018
