Saturday - February 1, 2003
At midnight, the mayhem broke loose.
Just before midnight, several of the people on the west side of XinSeng road
(In front of the Catholic church, next door to Chu-Wan's parent's home) ran
across the street to the Ta'An park side carrying more cases of
fireworks.
Several other people had been working on mounting something
on the concrete lane dividers in the middle of the street.
When midnight
hit, the two sides started firing missiles at each other. Meanwhile the devices
in the middle were periodically activated, showering a cascade of sparks into
the air and onto the street before exploding with a loud report.
There
were still some cars on the street and they found it difficult to drive through
the firefight. They would honk their horns and try to either drive slowly or
speed through as quickly as possible. None of this deterred the merry-makers
and they'd lob fireworks under the cars as they passed.
Nothing seems to
have gotten hurt and the fight lasted 15-20 minutes.
Meanwhile,
firecrackers were blasting throughout the city.
Chu-Wan had purchased a
couple of fireworks of her own, but they seemed woefully inadequate compared to
the cases brought by the others. Eventually she decided to set them off and
they were mostly duds. Only her sparklers worked as she expected.
The firecrackers continued through
the night, or at least I assume they did because they continued when we awoke
that morning (much later than usual.)
I didn't bother to go to the
memorial this morning because I'd been there last night, so today's pictures
are actually last night's. They looked more dramatic than the usual ones
anyway.
On Lunar New Year's day, most of the population heads to the
temple. The news showed massive crowds at Lungshan temple so we decided
to head there, leaving Michelle with grandma.
On the way, we passed McDonald's - to
my surprise, they were open and doing a lively business. Almost half the
clientele were foreigners who, presumably, had no place else to go. We were
having leftovers for lunch, so I had a quick meal to fill in the
gap.
Each time I go to one of these events, I keep describing it as the
biggest crowd I've ever seen. This was absolutely everyone jammed solid up
against everyone else - far worse than the markets. Thousands of people were
there making offerings and prayers. I was able to keep my head (and camera)
above the crowd and get several pictures, but it was impossible to do much more
than just follow along with the crowd as they pushed their way
through.
In the afternoon I got roped into a Mah Jong game with
the family. They're much more practiced than I am, and while I'm still trying
to organize my tiles in numeric sequence, they're already playing, so I miss
things... bottom line, I lost playing against a Catholic Priest, a nun and
Michelle's 80+ year-old great-grandmother.
Traditionally, you have to make
dumplings because they look like the old clumps of gold used for money in the
old days. Having dumplings insures wealth, so I also got roped into the
dumpling-making routine.
We took Michelle out to briefly visit Chu-Wan's
friend Nora who gave her a cute little Chinese outfit. All day when we'd been
out, all the parents had dressed their children up in little Chinese outfits
and it was really cute.
Chu-Wan's brother Johnny came home from the
military in the evening, for several days leave, but he's sick with a
cold.
Associated
Links:
Firefight Picture
Gallery
Longshan Temple Picture
Gallery
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