One thing I've got to give to the Chinese: they know how to celebrate a holiday.
I'm just wrapping up my first new year's day in China, a memorable celebration that I can only describe as Christmas, Thanksgiving, and the Biblical feast of Passover all rolled into one.
For almost a week now, there has been a general excitement in the air. Family owned stores and eateries closing for a week or two, grocery stores packed and looking like they've been raided in anticipation of a natural disaster, everyone shopping for their new clothes, and entire shops dedicated to decorations opening up. So many people have been mopping, scrubbing, and dejunking that piles of trash were everywhere and the national water usage must have a very noticeable spike. Even the stairs in the apartment complex and the sidewalk have been getting the layer of grime and filth that covered them scrubbed off, and store owners could be seen, chipping the layers of graffiti and cell number stickers off of their shutters.
As the day itself arrives, everything except the largest stores closes and everyone who possibly can goes home. Yesterday, one of our neighbors knocked at our door. He'd already helped us out by tearing down the old decorations around our door frame, and was offering ot put up a new one for us. I learned that on new year's eve, every house puts up a fresh set of banners, always red, at the top and sides of the front door, decorated with some sort of welcome and wish for good luck, and he was intent on helping out the clueless forigners. It took a while to explain that we'd already bought our own, and would put them up ourselves.
Before we got to that, another set of neighbors had scrubbed all the flights of steps between us and the ground, all four floors of them, and even washed our doormat. Finally, with the help of another kindly neighbor, we got our door decked out.
In the evening, we joined some local friends for supper, my first time to eat in a Chinese home, and played cards. After a few rounds of pokua (sp) a popular chinese game, I introduced spoons- or rather chopsticks, which went over wonderfully.
Regrettably early, we left and went back to our house, to pass the time till midnight. About 15 till, we grabbed cameras and made our way the the roof.
I'd been told to expect a show, but nothing prepared me for this.
As midnight approched, the fireworks began, first on the left, then the right, then more in the distance, then firecrakers by. As midnight arrived the skyline as far as the eye could see sparkled with fireworks, little ones shot from rooftops, big ones from hotels, and of course strings and strings of fireworks. The flashes were so bright and continious that I could have read by them, and the noise I can only describe as being about what I would expect to hear in a city under full scale bombardment! The explosions resounded in the concrete walled interior of the complex below, echoed from the roof of a distant sky scraper, and nearly defended us from the neighboring balconies.
A wall blocked our view of the whole panorama, but I found that by climbing onto a ledge and holding onto the bars that secured a patio below, I could see in all directions. My awe was cut short, however, when roman candles started whizzing up from the patio!

As we watched I noticed a strange thing. little reddish lights hung over the city, which I first took to be airplanes, but then I noticed that they were moving much too slowly, and that there were far too many of them- dozens, high over the tallest building, hovering and drifting slowly. For a moment the thought of Aliens ran through my mind, them I figured it out: the famous chinese fire ballon, a little paper creation that traps hot air from a candle and rises, often hundreds of feet high.
I'm going to have to get my hands on some them- they were truely beautiful, little flickering reddish yellow lights floating through the dark sky among all the fireworks.
Finally, after nearly an hour, the fireworks slowed and gave way to fires- poeple burning baskets of oversized play money- an ancestor worship thing, I think, and we made our way back to our waiting beds.