Of Memory and Chinese New Year

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  02.07.08 | 7:33 AM ET

imageThe Year of the Rat begins today, and I’m missing the firecrackers outside my window at 6 a.m. A year ago, I was living in a fourth floor walk-up above a night market in Taipei, taking in the full clamor of Chinese New Year for the first time.

The firecrackers exploding on that first day—long strings that writhed furiously on the ground, whistling bottle rockets that sent pedestrians ducking for cover—augured more to come. I was in for a week’s worth of sensory overload, anchored by a midnight image even Ang Lee couldn’t improve on: A half-dozen Taiwanese families, gathered on rooftops surrounding my building, carefully feeding stacks of “ghost money” into glowing urns.

Funny how I’ve edited out the lonelier parts of living abroad, though. As much as I’m wallowing in vivid recollections of last year’s Chinese New Year, a post on World Hum contributor Daisann McLane’s blog, Learning Cantonese, brings me up short. She writes:

I’m not a big fan of Chinese New Year in Hong Kong. Before I came here, I always imagined it would be a lively, fun time of great excitement and interest. Then I got here and found out that Chinese New Year is when all your favorite restaurants close for a week, the streets go dark for three days, and all your Hong Kong friends vanish into the bosom of their various family obligations.

She’s got it right, actually. Spending a major holiday in a foreign country can be terribly isolating. My Taiwanese friends disappeared as well that week, and as I stood on that rooftop, transfixed by the ghost money ritual, I’ll admit I’ve never felt more non-Chinese.

For now, I can rely on Daisann’s terrific Hong Kong dispatches in the International Herald Tribune’s Globespotters blog to keep me immersed in the culture.

This week, she sheds light on where to find the city’s best diner-style comfort food (try the cha chaan teng) and the Chinese New Year practice of writing spring couplets—four-character verses conveying luck and prosperity. 

Daisann’s own spring couplet, inked by a 77-year-old in Causeway Bay, reads: “The flower in heart embroiders (her) language/With serious grace and abundant affection.”

Keep the posts coming, Daisann. Xin nian kuai le!

Photo by yienshawn92 via Flickr (Creative Commons).