Chinese New Year

New Year in China isn’t just what you celebrate but where you celebrate and what it tells us about what we already know but maybe don’t always quite see. That China is a country of migrants, though it is not, as it is in many western countries, a migration of national peoples. Here it is a migration from the country to the city; from small town to large and most often within the same province, though ofcourse the general mass movement in recent decades East and South has been huge.


Having spent the previous Spring Festival (CNY) in Xi’an I saw a modern city with a very large population become quiet over a fortnightly period. Streets usually bustling with people were strangely, at such a festive season, quietened. Restaurants I was used to frequenting; closed. The train and bus stations fit to burst with an annual magnitude far exceeding reasonable fore planning. Though, I might add, the ease and general peace that receives these time–delays, queues and the simply huge numbers of people in transit is an example to us all. The stoicism that these delays and conditions are met with is nothing short of inspiring for most of us now so used to credit-card bookings and those of us in Britain used to our fair share of train delays. I will stop though from making any further sweeping statements about matters of reliability and forbearance regarding the transportation systems of China and just simply acknowledge that this is a pretty mad time to be travelling in China, mental preparation may be as important as the packing checklist.

This year I have visited my girlfriend’s hometown, a small town that come evening has a friendly, seaside promenade feel, even in winter and even though it is probably over a 1000km from the nearest beach. (Though upon visiting this time we discovered that the wide but slowly drying river running through the middle of town is to be damned and a water park developed between the two town-boundary bridges) However, the masses that I have witnessed on the streets here compared to previous visits has been phenomenal.

As my bus pulled into town the sheer number of motor bikes and pushbikes parked on the sidewalk, creating a sparkling, star swept vista of chrome and coloured metal, resembled a massive second-hand market of 2-wheeled vehicles and not simply the exterior of a supermarket where bikes were being left while shopping was being bought. It is an image I will not easily forget, not just because of the sheer number of bikes but because it reminds me of a life somewhat passed in many parts of China.

In some of the slower developing areas here you actually see some of the things that maybe you still expect to see upon arriving in China, but actually do not necessarily find. In this case, roads filled with bicycles and not the electric mopeds and 4-wheeled Hondas and Audi’s of downtown Xi’an, though the bicycle is here certainly rivaled by the motorbike. The masses have returned and they are doing so all over China and they are doing it by plane, train and a variety of automobiles.
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Chinese New Year at Xi'an's Southern Bus Station II. (Part I below)

Tomorrow is another day but I was up again and heading off to the bus station just as I had done two days earlier. This time as I arrived at the station I was relieved to see the line pleasingly manageable, probably about where I had entered it the first time just this time I was to do so legitimately and with over an hour before the station doors were to be opened. I had a good book tucked in my pocket but was more interested in just watching the morning’s activities unfold from a more secure vantage point than previously, although with a gathering crowd that was beginning to look increasingly unmanageable.


This time people were steadily allowed to gather in quite a large group around the head of the queue, with various characters skulking in the still darkened hours of early morning amongst them. Some of them, not happy enough to have slipped into a forward position while pretending to engage others with mild morning chatter, silently and slowly drifted even further forward in the queue. Until a collection of men who I had individually observed moving in and about the line had gathered at the head of the queue, first subtly peering inside the as yet unlit station before forming a niche of bodies infront of all others. This whole time people were steadily arriving and noticeably, like myself a couple of days earlier, unsure whether to stand their ground around the head of the line or take their place in the ever extending train of people heading backwards. I began to notice that there were a few men seemingly quite familiar with proceedings and confidently bestriding the line. I also recognised a couple of men in the queue who I had seen the previous morning and began to get the impression that there must ofcourse be some kind of third-party system for buying tickets.

The station attendants who the previous morning were wielding people into line with their sticks were conspicuous this morning by their absence. I was, from a reasonable starting point, beginning to worry that the large crowd that had formed around the entrance would actually lead to quite considerable delays and even a little bit of chaos and anger, if they did not soon manage it. I need not have worried although some earlier organisation may have been better for all concerned, but with only 10 minutes to go they arrived. The guards first, amusingly, removed the shadowy gentlemen at the head of the queue before creating a division between the single line and the rest. This was the time for some to take a place where they hadn’t previously but many were too slow to do so and were soon being jettisoned by a pointed finger, a shout, a rough banging of a stick on the ground at their feet or a quick pulling of an arm. From chaos moments earlier came calm; an orderly queue on one side and a collection of sleepy, unsure, slightly confused and frustrated, though still hopeful figures on the other. The line moved off inside the station.

I was one of the first in the queue and had my ticket in my hand within about 20 minutes, by which time the line at the window for my own particular destination was already over 100 souls deep. After some difficulty exiting the station through a mass of entwined queues and bodies I arrived outside again, to discover the line still disappearing into the distance down along the pathway. I was happy to have had this more sedately experience compared to the previous morning and the opportunity these two days to observe New Year matters down at the bus station, but happier still to be heading home with ticket tucked away securely.
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Chinese New Year at Xi'an's Southern Bus Station I.

Chinese New Year is fast approaching and people in their masses are heading home. Yesterday I wandered down to the bus station to buy a ticket for my girlfriend who is also returning home for Spring Festival, a few days before I join her. No problem I had thought, a bit of a wait then I would arrive back at the flat a knight in shining armour, clutching a much sought after ticket when she returned from work. However, upon arriving at the station I was faced with the unexpected sight of lines circling, exiting and then re-entering the building. This meant I would start off in the building, follow the line back out of the building, back in again and then wait with the 90 odd still ahead of me who were pressed as tightly together as possible, so to make the numbers seem smaller than they actually were.


Sadly, the numbers were themselves actually greater, swelled by those nipping in with the offer of cash to the lucky ones already edging towards the front of the queue. After surveying this scene I decided to check what time the station opened in the morning and what time I should realistically arrive. I was told it opened at 7 and I should be there by 6.30. Ok. 

I awoke earlier than intended and headed off on my bike. Upon arriving again at the bus station, this time in the dim light of morning and with hat and scarf sheltering my face from the cold, I discovered the queue to already be leading away from the main entrance, along the path and around the furthest corner, the end out of sight! I hovered for a few minutes by the entrance working out if it was possible to just join the line at this end but the yelling and wielding of 1-2 metre long sticks by security guards made that option look bleak. The guards were creating a safety zone around the official queue so anyone attempting to push in would be spotted, prodded, potentially whacked and then ejected. I slowly walked the length of the queue weighing up the depth of my chivalry, as I considered the necessary 2-3 hour wait that now faced me. Then as I a sauntered back up the line un-decided, worried in true prisoner's dilemma style that if I joined the line around the corner others would join it further up when the queue started moving, there was intense activity at the front of the line as the station opened.

At that point I was walking quite close to the queue and a gap appeared as people moved off ahead, without thinking I just stepped into it, I gotta say my heart was beating a lot faster having done so. It wasn’t my greatest chivalric moment but I was glad to be in line. Many others had done the same and the guards began running the queue, pulling out people here and there and at one point one headed straight for me with stick brandished, but instead threw out a chap just behind me. I heard one man behind me say I was a Laowai (foreigner) and not to worry. Terrible I know but great! These actions meant that once inside I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to the ones’ offering cash to those just ahead of me in the queue, where otherwise I probably would have done. I was out of the station and home before my girlfriend had even left for work. However, unsafe in the knowledge that as I am planning to leave on Thursday and with the fact that you can only buy your ticket three days before departure, I would be back at the station on Monday morning for more of the same or maybe a little worse.

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Sichuan Earthquake From Xi'an III.

The last of 3 posts written during the aftermath of the Sichuan Earthquake and which i have chosen to include here.

I recently bought an American hybrid bike, though ofcourse it was made here in China, the price of it was incomprehensible to the elderly generation living in my apartment block.  I had been riding traditional old steel stand-up framed bikes since arriving in China but wanted a bit more agility around town. The second of my old bikes was designed for farm work, I think with the weight of it it could quite reasonably have been used to pull the ox while the ox was still pulling the plough! However the point of this reference to my preferred choice of getting around, helmet-less pillion on a motorbike-taxi excluded, was that the recent weather reminded me why last year I ceased riding for a while.

The muddy rain is an annual event here in Xi’an, where cars are not simply splattered with water droplets but splashed by mud dipped rain drops, it is from the Loess Plateau dust coming in from the North. The worrying aspect I occasionally dwell upon is I am breathing in the dried version of this! I did however stop cycling for a while because of the wider causes of pollution, I just couldn’t get rid of a constant soreness at the back of my throat. Xi’an’s pollution is something I am used to, locals say it is getting better but probably more we are just getting used to it. It is improving, but there are still days when I can’t see the buildings on the opposite side of the road clearly.

When I was living in Britain I didn’t really watch much television so I watch especially little here, this has meant that I have not seen too much reporting on the earthquake this week. However, the teachers and children within the schools I work in are on constant alert, to the point of nervous obsession. The lamps hung in the ceiling swaying from the wind are being looked at as if a signal for escape, peeling paint and cracks in the walls previously un-noted now have attentive eyes kept on them, even the fun and games emanating from my classroom scared the children in the classrooms below.

Since the earthquake it is compulsory to leave all classroom doors open, this means that more than just my 60 kids get to experience a simple English dialogue shouted in operatic tones while emphasising individual syllables, first by me and then by the whole class! I hope the earths crust can soon steady itself and allow my children to get back to their rambunctious best, or worst depending on how one looks at it. One of the wonderful things about teaching Chinese children is their openness, their cheerfulness and lack of inhibition, they are at present a little more inhibited and ofcourse down right scared!  I, less than those in Sichuan itself, look forward to life returning to normal. This note does not continue. .
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Sichuan Earthquake From Xi'an II.

This is the second of the three posts included after the event.

Another week on from the earthquake and the schools have been intermittently closed as a precaution against any more tragic loss of young life. To the outsider returning it has seemed at times a little of an over-reaction, especially when a teacher's nervous disposition is enough to empty a classroom of children and subsequently a whole school. There are many people spread around the city still choosing to live outside their buildings; they are living on wooden mats on the pavement, in tents and under tarpaulins slung between park trees.  These scenes have become quite normal, with the same friendly Ma Jiang and Chinese chess (Xiang Qi) continuing to be played.  However, today i got a glimpse of what kind of fear they must have felt from watching and feeling the original quake.  Xi'an today experienced a minor tremor but enough to shake the walls of the restaurant I was sitting in. Diners around us quickly dashed for the exits, while my companion and I calmly noted the feeling of the tremor, intrigued by the uniqueness of the sensation, before beginning to wander from the restaurant. We hadn't reached the stairs when the shaking ceased, so we simply returned to our table. Though a minor shake comparatively it did make me aware of the quite disconcerting feeling of something being quite out of your control and that could have devastating consequences, in this instance the walls and floor of the restaurant you are in literally shaking and consequently shaking you. 

The only time i can remember having a similar loss of control, though without the potential effect of devastation, was during my PGCE year teaching in an Inner-City school.  I had been told that this would happen and that it was important how you react to it, but in those moments when you look about at your class and they are not paying any attention to you, and you don't know quite how to do anything about it, it feels mighty humbling.  The significant aspect of this experience was that it hit me a little later. It wasn't until I returned home sometime that night that I felt suddenly quite emotionally upset by the experience, i hadn't even been thinking about it, the feeling just crept up and hit me. It is not often we experience, even for a moment, a feeling of having absolutely no control over something we should, and expect, to have control over.  This earthquake has had that lasting effect here, not only on the lives and minds of the inhabitants of the worst effected areas in Sichuan but in all those areas that felt the initial quake and these subsequent tremors. The second realization is the dreadful situation that most of those families are going to face in the coming months, as the wet season sets into Sichuan; the bereaved, injured, homeless and landless have so much more to face than the deep psychological shock of being thrust into an horrifying experience, over which they had no control. 

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Sichuan Earthquake From Xi'an I.

This is the first of three notes that were written at the time of the Sichuan earthquake and that set my mind thinking about beginning a Blog. Now i have finally got around to starting one I have decided to include them... 

I have just arrived back in China, having spent my first week outside the country, in over 18 months, at the exact time China experienced it's worst disaster for many years.  The Chinese words that have constantly greeted me on my return are "earthquake", "afraid", "frightening" and "brave". The latter has strangely been used a few times to refer to me, because i am told i have chosen to return here at this difficult time. I ofcourse am not brave, I am simply returning to the country where I now live and that I have grown to love.  I did though recently read a story about a group of teachers that protected their primary school pupils through the worst of the quake and then led all of them over the mountains to safety. They too claimed not to be brave, just doing they said what anybody would do. It was their responsibility as teachers, they noted, to protect their children. Today I heard about a grand-mother found already dead but bent over, sheltering the grand-daughter beneath her who was still alive. Some forms of bravery are harder to deny than others.

The images on the TV networks here revolve around the positive response of the Chinese nation to this disaster, an impression of a nation standing up and facing the worst. The images were broadcast across all networks and on any available screen; the length of my internal flight from Shanghai, on every household TV and on the huge outdoor screen infront of Xi'an's shining new Exhibition Centre, watched by many.  A western media source I read in Britain questioned the state led interpretation of the news, that it did not show situations where the medical staff and army were overwhelmed but concentrated on the positive scenarios and stories. This reminded me of a recent incident, not widely known amongst the people of Xi'an, concerning an aborted suicide bomb attempt in central Xi'an. A Chinese friend of mine questioned the need to spread the news of this event, noting it would only be negative and that one random, one off occurrence by somebody "crazy" would worry too many people, proportionally greater than the event itself. The same rosy sentiment could be seen in the media portrayal of some aspects of the earthquake. The whole picture may be missed but a concern for the positive and the upbeat is not, this is a theme I may well return to, as it is something that can be felt on a day-day basis here and is certainly not all bad, taking it as I am doing at face value.

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