...and a happy New Year!

While I had many hopes for my first ever New Years Eve celebration in China, it came to a sudden end due to the evils of baijiu and the Chinese custom of relentless toasting. Scott and I were invited to the city of Anning, located just 40 km southwest of Kunming. Anning in famous for its hot springs and Mrs. Shu, a kindergarten principle at one of Scott’s schools, invited us to spend the day there along with three other Canadian teachers and Steven, one of the bosses of the kindergarten teaching company.

The day started of wonderfully. We took the hour-long bus ride to Anning and were greeted by Mrs. Shu and her friends. They took us for a short hike in the surrounding hills, up to a restaurant. There we relaxed for several hours, drinking tea and playing cards and mahjong. I finally learned how to play this famed Chinese game. It’s actually quite simple once you learn all the rules and I even won a few rounds. I’m looking forward to sharpening my skills and perhaps taking a stab at the mahjong tables with the old folks in Green Lake Park.

Around noon, we were treated to a delicious New Years Eve feast with a large group of us guests, Mrs. Shu’s friends and some local Party authorities. I knew we were in for a bit of drinking when I saw Mrs. Shu fill our glasses to the brim with baijiu (rice wine) from a brown ceramic jug. Based on the looks of the jug, this was rice wine of the home-brewed variety: the equivalent to American moonshine. She then proudly announced that this was the strongest of the baijiu family, weighing in at a hefty 56% alcohol. The Chinese are quite fond of making toasts and it’s not uncommon, especially on a special occasion, for a toast to be made every five minutes. As this was New Years Eve, the toasts were flying and the baijiu was pouring like water. When we ran out of baijiu, they broke out bottles of red wine. Then, to really ring in the New Year, some men of the Yi minority group brought over sheep horns filled with hot, sweet brandy, which we all took turns guzzling as they sang songs of welcome and cheer. By the end of lunch I could barely function and it was only 2:00 pm.

The rest of the day was a blur. We went to the hot springs, which consisted only of a large, warm indoor pool. I was disappointed as hot springs are high on my list of favorite attractions and this one scored quite low. I’ve heard though that Anning has a Japanese-style spa with more atmosphere and numerous pools, including ones filled with milk, flowers and little fish that nip and exfoliate your skin. After the springs, we had some ginger tea at a nearby teahouse and then headed back to Kunming. I was in bed by 8:00 pm and when Scott woke me up at midnight to wish me a happy New Year, I was already coming into my hangover.

To my surprise, Chinese celebrate the New Year on both the western and lunar calendar. The Chinese New Year, known also as “Spring Festival”, isn’t until February and is the most important holiday. Almost everyone gets one to two weeks off from work and travels either home to their families or to popular tourist spots around China. With China’s 1.3 billion inhabitants, this holiday creates the largest temporary human migration in the world. Planes, trains and buses are packed to capacity and national parks are flooded with people and garbage. Our friend Jordan, who is from the Hunan province, must travel on a train for 36 hours to reach his hometown and like many middle class or poor Chinese, his ticket doesn’t include a seat – it’s standing room only.

In the 90’s, China made an effort to boost domestic tourism and added two more week-long national holidays to its calendar: one in September and one in May. Both were called “Golden Week” and fulfilled their purpose in filling hotels, restaurants and tourist locations with adventurous Chinese. The experiment did so well that it created a real problem for transportation and excess pollution of national parks. The government made a move this year to do away with the Golden Weeks and in its place, created several extended weekends throughout the year. New Year on the western calendar was one of these extended weekends, so we got both Monday and Tuesday off from work.

Scott and I have about five weeks off from work for Spring Festival and while we are itching to see some of China’s immense countryside, famed cities and historical sites, we’d rather not be caught in the middle of this massive flood of traveling Chinese. So… we’re heading to Vietnam for a month! It’s only 10 hours by bus to the south on a bumpy, sketchy road or we can take a 12-hour train ride to the city of Nanning and then an 8-hour bus ride to Hanoi. We’re going with the latter option. Today we went to the Vietnamese consulate and will return tomorrow to firm up our visas. And while this blog is titled “ChinaMusing”, I think I’ll have to include some musings on Vietnam as well. Stay tuned!