China I am home

It feels good to be back and so it should when one returns from a trip. I was excited again about the small things about living here, in this city, Kaifaqu (the Big Sneeze), that I had long stopped noticing. Example 1: the nice smell of the candles in our apartment and how warm it is compared to outside. Example 2: The China haze; thicker than any haze I have ever seen that hides and isolates you from what else is out there... confining yet comforting. Example 3: The park behind our apartment and all that occurs there. My place of refuge. This picture of the park I took today, standing across my road, on the way to the store (that was closed for the Chinese New Year week... oops).

Discarded leftovers from an enormous party with over 1 300 000 000 invitees. I celebrated Chinese New Year in good company, wandering in Londons Chinatown and I thought I missed it all back here. The city looks as if it has been sprinkled with a red paper confetti; firecracker leftovers wind blown into every small crack, crevas and corner in the country and all the ghosts scared away. It is obvious I missed the big weekend but echoes of the celebration continue as the remaining (or reserve) firecrackers are lit. From morning until night. Bringing in the morning at six and allowing for bed first at 11. One line explodes and ends, triggering the car alarms, fading shortly after and then the other explosions in the distance can be heard again, followed by their associated car alarms. And then it starts again in the next complex and I tell my friend I'll call her back when it's over because I can't hear her but I end up going into the bathroom instead as I would have waited until 11.... I just read in the news that two years ago, the Chinese government lifted a 12 year ban on fircrackers. Hence the incredible number. Everyone wants to play! There are fireworks too. Constantly too. Out my back window tonight I watched some as I put on a little Enya, then I sat down and read a chapter of my book, got up again and the fireworks were still going there. Hardly believable.

Pig, Golden Pig and No Pig

In late January, at 4am on a train back to Dalian from north, northern China, everyone was jolly and awake, eating packaged meat, drinking bai jiu, playing cards and visiting the foreigners in cabin F on their way to the smoking area... including a young girl named Xiu Lee. We chatted long enough to feel aquainted and before she left, she gave me her bracelet of stone pig beads, all different stones with different meanings.... luck for health, luck for love, luck for family and more and more and more. She was lovely, I love wearing the bracelet (I play with it like Tibetians do their prayer beads) and because of all this I have developed a particular interest in this New Year, the year of the pig.
I started seeing pigs everywhere. On peoples clothes, bags, newspapers, even in Starbucks. They have funky Starbucks pigs (with no eyes) in their display window. I learned it was not just the year of the pig, but the year of the Golden pig (2007 is a gold year, on the five year element rotation). Meaning it only comes around every 60 years, which makes it even MORE auspicious. No golden pig on my bracelet, but my love for it is unconditional.
But... while in London, browsing in marked-up shops on Chinatowns strip, I commented on the significance of this years Golden Pig to the Chinese sales woman and she had no idea what I was talking about. She said she was born in London and didn't know much about it. Sorry. I was on my own. We didn't buy anything and as we walked out, I played with my bracelet instead.
So when I got back to China I watched some Chinese CCTV. On the night of Chinese New Year the same all-night variety show is broadcasted on all channels in all regions and, so my landlord says, it is 'traditional' for the whole family to watch. I didn't see any pigs. I looked online and saw that the government banned the pig from being shown on tv.

"Although for most Chinese the pig represents wealth and happiness, images of the chubby pink beast were banned from state television out of concern they would offend China's 20 million Muslims whose religion bans the consumption of pork." - from China Daily today

So my research enlightens me that Chinese New Year, one of the oldest traditional celebrations on earth, means to each person whatever they make of it, Chinese or not. So there go my sweeping generalizations about symbolism; boomeranging around full circle to bonk a deeper appreciation of cultural diversity into my head. As I write this, I am playing with my bracelet. My lucky pigs.

Flight Home

I had taken seven flights already this vacation and was beginning to wonder why I hadn't met any flight 'neighours' to talk to and pass the hours. Just bad luck I figured: half empty planes, not English speakers, walkman wearers. On my BA flight back to China, however, I met a tipsy, 55 year old French man rather spontaneously when he cupped my ears with his hands and kissed me on my cheeks as we crossed paths at the plane bathroom. Later, when he popped up over the top of his seat and tapped my sleeping face, I realized he was in row 33 and me in row 32; which made him officially my neighbour. I would discover he too, was just the kind of neighbour to make up for my recent neighbour scarcity. He spoke French... fast and when I told him I didn't speak French, he would apologise, speak one sentence in indecipherable English, get excited, and switch back to French again without appearing to notice. It wasn't until 10 minutes of understanding only the words "peepee" and "je" that I suggested German and this was a tremendous communication barrier breakthrough for us and the only hope of our neighbourly relations improving. Then he talked even faster. Turns out, he had been telling me he was going to Beijing to 'peepee' off the Great Wall because he had nothing else to do; a retired professor of Cinema in Paris he was. He would be there for three days. A few months before, he had gone to Machu Picchu to smoke a cigarette at the top. He said a police woman told him by law he wasn't allowed to smoke at 4000 ft. He never mentioned if he had complied but he seemed like the kind of guy that probably would have pulled out his pack and proposed they enjoy the moment together. I never told him anything about myself, actually I never really spoke, but for the purposes of an airplane neighbour, he had enough to say for the both of us. It was a win win.

Oxford Street Hotel - I love it!

I felt like Alice in Wonderland in my little old brick apartment building off Oxford Street. A church arcoss the street, picketers on the corner and a Thai resaurant on the other. The floors creeky and the stairs not level as they turned direction. I fell in love with my hotel room again and again each time I noticed a resemblance to grandma's house!

Dolphin and pilot whale soup

I didn't know dolphins burped until this day.

Mount Teide

Interesting fact about Teide: Many Hollywood movies with desert scenes have been shot at Teide for two reasons: it looks like a desert and it is tax free. Star Wars being one of them. I loved the look of that plant.

Tenerife

Playa de Duque - black sand looks pretty but no swimming.

Tenerife

Last Fall, Lauren, my old and fantastically fun friend from our cruise ship days together, proposed to me a trip to the Canary Islands. We didn't see any North American tourists until the airport gate on our flight back!! I ate a lot of pizza and gelato and laughed constantly.

This is me and a local Spanish charmer mid merengue... and this is Lauren and I!

Short Visit to Vancouver

After a year and a half, Vancouver is still as wonderful as I always imagine. The air fresh, trees green even in January, friends and family to visit and I think I have eaten food characteristic of a different country every night since I arrived. I have mixed feelings about leaving today already.