Parade, fireworks, madness -- and death? -- in Suide's Lantern Festival

I'm in a Shaanxi Internet bar reading about the fire in Beijing and I can't help but think that maybe the Lantern Festival really was more exciting there than in Yenan*.

Then I look at these pictures I took, including the one above, and I think... nah.

Later that night, after an impressive fireworks show (pictures later), at a particularly crowded and festive street corner, I stood 15 meters from the spot where a man either leapt or fell 30 meters off a bridge onto a pile of trash. He lay there unconscious as hordes of people crowded around the railing to see what happened. I was among those who saw the body, and suffice to say, it was disturbing. Firetrucks arrived 10 minutes later and cops tried securing the perimeter, but as this was the Lantern Festival -- the final hours of it, actually -- they weren't all that successful. People kept nudging their way to the railing and saying things like, Qi lai le, qi lai le! (He's getting up, getting up), but that was definitely not the case -- the man never moved.

I'll tell you now that I left before the planks and ladders from the firetrucks were lowered, so I don't know whether the guy jumped or fell (the peanut gallery insisted he fell; they kept saying he drank too much, and they said this with smiles on their faces, which seemed unbefitting of the situation). I don't know whether he survived. It was, to say the least, a bizarre end to a wild holiday.

More bizarre than the CCTV tower engulfed in flames? Not sure. I'll write more about this when I return to Beijing Thursday.

One more note:

Yenan, for those who don't know, was the place where Mao Zedong consolidated his power and more or less created the Communist Party. Since the official end of Chinese New Year festivities, I've moved on with my dad and his entourage -- including a former literature laureate of the province -- to Yanchuang, where we toured Vice President Xi Jingping's old yaodong (yaodongs are essentially rooms carved into moutain faces, like caves, but a bit more homely and inhabitated by people). I'm now in a big Internet bar in a small town in Shaanxi. Details of this trip will be explained in a book in a few years or so.

Or this weekend. We'll see.

POSTSCRIPT: The guy who just logged onto the computer next to me is looking at porn and shifting uneasily in his seat. This may be my cue to leave.

*UPDATE, 2/11, 10:50 p.m.: It's not Yenan, it's Yanan. And, as the updated blog post title shows, it's not Yanan -- it's Suide. For an explanation of this rather egregious mix-up, see this post.

Greetings from Tiger Leaping Gorge

Where every shot is a postcard...







Much, much more to come later.

This post is backdated from Feb. 10. The above pictures are from our first day at the gorge. On Day 2 we hiked nine hours from Tina's Hostel to Horse's Head -- the beginning of the gorge -- where we caught a van to Lijiang and then an overnight bus to Kunming.

Greetings from Chengdu

Where I just had the worst sirloin steak ever -- it came on a skillet with noodles and an over-easy egg, with lukewarm red tea. The waiter who delivered it said something like "zhou" and pointed to a napkin. I had no idea what he meant so I gave him a confused look. Zhou, he said. I told him I was confused. Then he opened the napkin for me and had me open it before me as a shield while he lifted the lid on the skillet. I think he was afraid of the grease jumping onto my shirt.

Anyway, later I saw a Chinese couple presented with the same dish, and they seemed to know the drill. This only exacerbated my confusion.

The noodles had a distinctly Asian taste and the egg... well, it made no sense. Oh, I also got a mushroom soup, which was a bit cold and reminded me of nothing at all. Please understand, I'm not complaing -- merely pointing out that Sino-ized American food, like Americanized Chinese, just doesn't compare to the real thing.

This was the first steak I've ever ordered in China. I guess I couldn't have expected much when the menu (Houcaller is the name of the place, in case you're interested) listed it as 29 Yuan, or three-and-half U.S. dollars.

More later, including a picture of what real Sichuan food looks like. And sometime next week I'll post pictures and stories from the Beijing miaohuis (spring festivals, which I like to call "county fairs") I've spent all of last week attending.

POSTSCRIPT: I'm betting on the Cardinals to cover in the Super Bowl. Secretly, I think they're going to pull the upset. But keep that between us.

Videos from last night's New Year's celebration

Here's what midnight looked like from Houhai:


And my friend Jeff on what Chinese New Year's about:

The Chinese know how to start new years

This was my first Chinese New Year in China since I was five, and my day-after impression is this: forget about New Year's celebrations in every other country, forget about the Fourth of July, forget even the parties in Brazil on any of their many festivals... the scene that took place last night in every neighborhood and on just about every street here in Beijing was the single most ridiculous, exciting, indescribable, over-the-top thing I have ever seen. The night was lit up. The city was transformed into a war zone, with gunpowder exploding in all directions. You saw folks place their boxes of fireworks in the middle of the street, light them and dart back into the sidewalks of safety, like rebels setting charges. (I had the misfortune of not seeing one of these fuses, and the explosion, just a few meters away, made me jump. People around me laughed.)

I was told last night wasn't as grand as it has been in the past -- three years ago, for instance, the year after the Chinese government lifted a brief (very brief) moratorium on New Year's fireworks -- owing mostly to the bitter cold, which makes me wonder, This thing could be bigger? I will never, ever watch another pyrotechnic show in the same way as before.

Videos to come, but first the pictures:


Xidan and Ginza Mall are never this empty on any other day.


Taken on the steps of Dongzhimen 7/11.


Stocking up.




Many ways of looking at the same red lantern.


Houhai behind us.



The aftermath.

And whatever this is:

Chinese New Year live blog!

It's Mardi Gras, the Fourth of July, and Christmas all in one; rockets exploding in between skyscrapers, restaurant owners setting off fireworks next to 7/11, every local accepting their role in this most ridiculous of celebrations.. The Year of the Ox officially commences in...

10!

9!

8!



4!



1...

Late words and pictures from Obama's inauguration

I got in on Tuesday night feeling sickly and exhausted, with one of my suitcases left behind in Minneapolis, but I wasn't going to miss this...

Pictures from Rickshaw, which was jam-packed with foreigners who had to shush up the Chinese bartenders who spoke during Obama's speech:



It's a proud time to be an American. Obama's unabashed confidence and optimism is contagious, and these uncertain times, our best defense as a collective may just be something as abstract as "hope." Then again -- and this is me writing three days after the fact, as opposed to the day after -- I think it's fair to say we should all be just a little more skeptical.

About the aforementioned sickness: I can't figure out if my current illness is due to some pathogen I bore over from the U.S. or the bug going around Beijing as we speak. I hope it's the former, otherwise I may get sick again, say, next week. Ugh.

POSTSCRIPT: This was a happy sight: