The six stages of experiencing Spring Festival as a foriegner

Arguably the most important holiday in China is Chinese New Year's, known here as “Spring Festival.” The festival starts on February 6 and lasts until about February 13. I was lucky enough to be in Beijing for this exciting time. Although many of Beijing's inhabitants are migrant workers who return home for the Spring Festival, there were still plenty of Beijingers around to make the Spring Festival an exciting time.


After the Spring Festival, I tried to come to grips with my experience, and decided that I wanted to present it as:


The six stages of Spring Festival, from a foreigner's perspective.


Stage One: Mild amusement

You're awakened by a series of six loud bangs. As you're wondering if you should call the police to report gunshots in your vicinity, ten more loud shots ring out. At this point, luckily your roommate mentions that this is Day One of Spring Festival, and that throughout the next week people will constantly use fireworks. You muse at how strange it is that people are using firecrackers in the middle of the day, but really don't think too much of the occasional bang that rings out.


Stage Two: Awe

As nightfall approaches, the firecrackers become more and more frequent. You start to wonder: who could be lighting this many firecrackers? Then you remember: You're in Beijing China, and there are 15 million people living here plus who-knows-how-many migrant workers.


At about 7pm, you walk outside. There's a faint smell of ash in the air- even though there's no one in sight lighting a firecracker. At this point, judging by the sound, people are setting off an ungodly amount of fireworks. Most people describe being in a Chinese city during Spring Festival like being in a war zone, with people firing guns everywhere and bombs going off. Although this is an okay description, I don't think it does true justice to the sheer frequency of **BANG**s. To me, it sounded more like being inside a microwave as it's simultaneously popping 100 bags of popcorn... for 12 hours.


Now at this point, you're really starting to suspect that this is a whole new culture. It's 7:00PM and people are setting off fireworks like it's 11:59PM on New Year's Eve at Times Square. The fireworks will continue steadily at this alarming rate right until midnight.


Although the sound is probably the most overwhelming part of experiencing Spring Festival in Beijing, the visual experience is fascinating as well. Nonstop fireworks flower in the sky. And although the streets are hardly packed, locals gather here and there in small groups to light firecrackers. Spring Festival is usually a time when Beijingers return home to their families. The normal custom is for families to eat dinner together while watching the CCTV gala television program (4 hours of Chinese music performances and skits). So most of the people in the streets are young waiters and waitresses who have to work through Spring Festival if they want to keep their jobs, or those who perhaps don't have the means to return home, or want to avoid the inconvenience. The young people are mostly happy, but the older ones seem fairly sullen as they set of fireworks. After all, the entire culture of fireworks in China is a little bit different than in the West: we set them off because they look pretty, they set them off because they're supposed to scare off evil spirits.


Stage 3: Slight annoyance

Whoo! It's midnight! Happy New Year! We can all go home now, right? Nope, not in Beijing. In fact, people continued to set off firecrackers until at least 3AM and probably throughout most of the night.


Stage 4: Worry

On the second day of the Spring Festival, you start to notice the nuances of the Spring Festival fireworks practices. That guy across the street lighting off firecracker after firecracker isn't a crazy midget: he's a 10 year-old kid. And the parents are nowhere in sight. You watch Chinese families launch fireworks out of the windows of their apartments. On top of all this, on New Year's Eve in China, apparently cars don't have the right of way: people setting off fireworks do. Meanwhile, firetrucks, ambulances whizz by. And also, the pungent smell of smoke in the air and decreased visibility makes you wonder if Spring Festival fireworks are the real cause of the Beijing's smog.


Stage 5: Frustration, but glee at having experienced a real part of Chinese culture

It's Day 7 of the Spring Festival, and thankfully, the frequency of **BOOMS** had decreased. If Days 1-3 was the Gulf War, Day 4-7 can be compared to a medium-sized conflict between African despots. However, by day 7 the choice of weapons has also changed. On Days 1-3, the firework of choice was the pretty exploding “bianhua,” the kind you're used to seeing at the average Independence Day family barbeque. On Days 4-7, the firework of choice is “ bianpao,” which is essentially a loud BANG with no visual effect. And these fireworks are constantly punctuating your daily life, going off when you least expect it, and helping you understand why so many soldiers return from war develop post-traumatic stress disorder.


Stage 6: Glee

After the final firecrackers rang out on the evening of Day 7, I felt a bit shellshocked, but on the whole pretty glad to have experienced this holiday. Chinese New Year's is no joke- instead of Dick Clark at Times Square, they've got a TV special that a whopping 1.1-1.3 billion Chinese watch every year. And instead of fireworks at midnight, they've got fireworks at midnight, 1am, 2am, and so on, for 7 days. All in all, it was a good way to usher in the Year of the Rat. Hopefully it's the Year of the Rat in name only, and not a sign of creatures who want to inhabit my dorm room.