Xin Nian Kuai Le!
This might just be one of the best photos I've ever taken. The more I look at it, the more I love it. I should be a backstage Peking Opera groupie a little more often!
Happy New Year!
And Happy New Year to me and my new digital camera!
This year will most likely be my last in Shanghai, so I decided to forego the bars and go do something relatively local for New Years. Friends invited me to parties, New years dinners, all you can drink bars, but in the end, after a few friends who were planning to come with me found other plans, I wound up spending New years on my own at Longhua temple. Well, correction. I rang in the new year with 20,000 of my new best friends.
Strangely enough, when I lived in Taiwan, The Jan 1st New Years holiday wasn’t such a big deal- the Taiwanese geared up for Chinese New Year. Here in Mainland China, They celebrate the Jan 1 New year with two days off work (well not exactly –you need to make up the days missed on the scheduled dates resulting in 13 day work weeks sometimes!) and Chinese New Year is known as the “Winter Festival.” It’s actually this sort of stuff that makes me miss Taiwan- A very vibrant place that sticks to tradition and culture- Here it has been diluted by the cultural revolution- traditions forgotten, temples wiped out- so coming to spend New Years at one of the best preserved temples in Shanghai and see smiling faces celebrating Chinese style, well, it was refreshing and I was filled with appreciation to be able to witness it all.
A little about Longhua Temple and Pagoda- It’s the oldest monastery in Shanghai being said to date from the tenth Century. Longhua refers to the papal tree under which Buddha achieved enlightenment. They have a 6500 kg bell which is very auspicious to ring, and you can ring it three times for an auspicious 10 Kuai. So we literally rang in the new year!
The seven storey pagoda was originally built in 977, but has been reconstructed several times, the latest being in 1952. Next to Longhua Temple there is a large park which was the site of an old Kuomintang prison. 800 communists, intellectuals and political agitators were executed there between 1928 and 1937. During world war two this was a Japanese internment camp and airfield which was depicted in the Spielberg film ,”Empire of the Sun.” Just in case you forgot Shanghai was in a communist country.
Hopping on my trusty bike, which (something my father will be happy about!) has been in my posession for almost two months now, I started out through Xujiahui, which was teeming with cars, scooters, bikes and pedestrians. With 19 million plus people in Shanghai, this kind of reveling is not joyous, but rather quite scary, as I witnessed an older woman fly through the air in a head on collision with a whizzing scooter. She flew through the air like a test dummy and landed hard on the road, New Years purchases and purse flying. One woman stopped to help while the crowded street and I looked on. Usually I would have helped but with my Chinese and knowledge of what to do in this situation in Shanghai, I would have been more of a hindrance than a help. I felt quite useless and sad as I rode away. Carefully.
The rest of the night was quite fun. Here's a little photo exhibit of the night:
This is not a real tree. Hence why it has beautiful gold leaves. For a small price, you can buy a red or yellow ribbon and write your good wishes for the new year, and hang them in the tree. I think the first people got to hang them nicely, but by the time I got there, people were tying them to slightly heavy objects and lobbing them into the tree. Hence the chicken wire around the bottom. I like this picture of the girls- "Look at us! Our pose shows we can be cute and communist at the same time!"
Writing messages, posing for pictures. Some people prepared their messages ahead of time and added them to the tree, like the little blue bag you can see hanging in the tree. I also saw talismans and cel phone straps. Impromptu offerings!
You can also have your picture taken with the dragons, but I wasn't willing to hand over my new camera to a perfect stranger, so you get to look at these handsome folks instead.
More dragon dancers. With big toothy smiles. A rarity in Shanghai. The smiles and the dragons.
More Dragons. What do dragon dancers do when they aren't dancing? They text-message their girlfriends, sleep and smoke behind the stage in their funky pants.
Front Stage. I took this picture as I was being jossled by the crowd. Im shocked it turned out so well.
Ahhh. So nice to have a clear view of dancing ladies. I had a good spot for the rest of the show!
And then there is this thing that happens. Where you think, "What the hell?" I think these are advertisements. An army of them came in and lined up in front of the stage along with a bunch of priveleged guests who I think paid more to get in front of the barrier. It's a moment every foreigner has had at one point or another in this city- Where you think something could be a good thing, but somehow someone finds a way to ruin it, usually with the intention of cashing in. So I moved on.
These are the freeloaders who didnt actually pay to get into the temple. But they are most likely smart freeloaders because Im sure they could see over the plexiglass advertisements that short people like me couldn't clear.
Holy burnin' incense!
This picture has a chummy campfire feel to it, don't you think? Lighting incense from burning bowls of coal.
Bai bai-ing. Chinese praying with burning incense as an offering. Sharing fire love.
This is where the incense ends up. Strange, After all that praying, I saw people dump the incense in fire buckets much like throwing it in a holy trash can. I guess once the praying's done, the incense can be discarded.
More paper on which to scribble your wishes and tie to the string. People also lobbed money into the canister this little impromptu fence surrounded. If your money gets lodged in, it's lucky. Mine went right through and I couldn't find it on the other side. I think it's because I signed that paper saying I'm a loser.
After all that Bai Bai-ing with the burning incense, it's time to say hello to the big guy and hope he hears your wishes and prayers for the new year.
Men in uniform in China. Oh, and a woman. Nice that everyone came out to play! These monks actually live in the temple and took the time out to talk to people. The monks and the police dotted the crowd wherever I went.
New Years Cops. I'm not sure why they cleared half the temple grounds on one side of a courtyard, but it was sudden and weren't speaking to the crowd. I suspect either they somehow wanted to control the crowd to one side of the temple, or someone important may have come to the building behind them to pray. But anyone's guess is as good as mine. Or maybe they were making sure we didnt have too much fun. Or that was really incense that was smoking.
Hanging out with friends. I appreciated the guy in the left picture. He made sure he was smiling anytime I pointed the camera his direction. He even got a smile back! : )
Performers waiting to perform. But I don't think they ever did perform. I think they went out in the crowd for photo ops and them came back. I know. I saw them leave and come back and there was no performance in the middle. So So So Chinese!
My New Year's neighbours. Imagine me somewhere in the middle. Xin Nian Kuai Le! Now gimme some room!
Weee! Happy New year! Confetti, bubbles, fireworks and monks! What more can you ask for from life?
They rang the temple bell 108 times to send us all home with New Year luck.
Alright you people! Party's over! I wanna go home! Look at all the red firecracker crap you are leaving behind! take your burning incense with you if you haven't chucked it in the barrel already! Move it! The exit is that a way!
Lucky unrecognizable meat products and tofu. All the food for sale inside the temple was veg. Everything outside was fair game. Or used to be game.
It's particularly lucky to eat long noodles, because they mean long life. This guy can't dish noodles and take money fast enough!
These guys were pretty determined to sell me a bag of unrecognizables covered in sesame seeds. I tried to play that game-"animal mineral or vegetable" with them, but they weren't up to my tricks. All the food for sale outside the temple was "lucky food." Each one has a special meaning, but all these sellers were willing to tell me was that it was lucky.
I didn't have any and I didn't get lucky. Maybe they are on to something.
Not sure if all that lucky message writing, temple praying, fire cracking, auspicious bell ringing or special lucky food eating did you any good? Well, you can always buy yourself some enlightenment on the way home, like this lady. She must have done something really baaaaad in 2006.
Could this be an indication that the fire crackers are a little too loud? Yes, the burning bonfire in the middle of the crosswalk is really a bunch of exploding Chinese fire crackers. I needed both hands to take this picture. What? What? What did you say?!!?
Whew! My ride was not ripped off. I'm cruisin' home Chinese style. Happy New Year Mama Lion! And you too, Mao!
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On the way home, the streets were largely empty and so I cruised home in leisure, passing a lot of drunk teenagers and fighting couples. Ahhh, New years is the same every where, isn’t it?
I got home and chatted via Skype with a friend in Ottawa. “Happy New Year!” I wished him from thirteen hours ahead. “Do you realize you are so far away we are living in different years now?” He mused.
And it is partly for this reason that I have decided to leave China. Where to go and when to leave hasn’t quite been decided. But I am generally happy about the decision though when I am out on nights like this is know I am going to miss a lot of things about this place.
On to the next adventure! Happy New Year!