Fireworks and Buses

I’m doing real good (well). My mind is full of thoughts and they have no place to go right now other than this page and your eyes – lets begin.

I may have begun a friendship today. I was relegated to my tutor’s place because “my” place was busy celebrating (apparently something this program doesn’t believe in). My tutor is an unassuming mildly charismatic and dignified woman in her early 40s. Its true that we we were speaking in Chinese, and that sometimes I struggled to express myself, but the line between study and conversation blurred a little, the beginning of a semi-friendship began to form, and a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I really don’t ask for much, require much, to be happy – now, with half a friend for 6,000 miles around my world became a bright and shiny place. The truth is, improvements are better than downgrades and that all it takes – I the eternal optimist.

Chinese New Year was last night.

I prefer to call it “Insanity Holiday”. Apparently more people than the current population of Earth take trains to join up with their families in the 15 days surrounding the Chinese New Year (all domestic travel within China). Its more than all of Britain’s travel for a year and blah blah blah other impressive statistics. Everyone gets together and yammers and plays mahjohnng and watches Chinese acrobats in panda suits wheel on unicycles while twirling plates on 20 foot tall sticks and singing the national anthem. Kids eat 50 pounds of sugar and adults get drunk. Then an hour before midnight a 2 hour firework bonanza rips the world to shreds.

THIS WAS INDESCRIBABLY RIDICULOUS. The city doesn’t do fireworks – individuals do. But there are no laws restricting the type of firework and no regulations on quality or safety. Earlier in the day I went with Li Zi to the firework shop and saw others buying these hundreds of dollar firework boxes. They’re the real thing, amd explode mightily sending ear crushing missiles of a thousand colors in every direction. The majority go up, but some turn over, shoot side ways, hit people, things, and cars. The streets light with fire and every car alarm in the city goes off. The noise decibel level is outrageous and the sky all around you from 5 to 500 feet is lit asunder.

I mean … there is usually distance between fireworks – these are launched from boxes standing at your feet. The people light up a cigarette take a few puffs, use it to light a few fuses, and take a few more puffs and the ground beneath them explodes. Anyway, it was pretty frigging cool and for no particular reason nobody got hurt, so that was a plus. It turns out that fireworks can bounce off of jeans – who knew? (Note: kids – do not try this at home)

A brief comment on jobs in China. I don’t understand them. I began not understanding them my last stay in China when after a torrential down pour a mob of people some clad in bright neon green vests emerged to sweep water away from objects and toward drains. They used mops and brooms and sticks with gobs of leaves encrusted on them and struck away at the clear ground pushing water toward already flooded holes. Who were these people? I wondered, who pays them, what do they do when there aren’t 40 feet of rain falling from the sky. I also tilt my head in curiosity at the “extras” at stores and buildings. Even the smallest kiosk usually has 2 people whose job it is to stand near the door. That appears to be it. They stand. They wear a uniform with the company’s insignia. How much do they earn? How did they “qualify”. My new favorite is the “middle of the bus manager”. They are nearly all obese and drifting in and out of sleep. They sit in a chair. That is it. It seems that there used to be an era in which they collected money and announced stops to the passengers. Today everyone beeps into the bus with an electronic card or places money in the electronic machine, and the programmed buses announce clearly in two languages what stops are ahead and when a stop is approaching. They sit. In my experience a bus can take in as little as 7 to 10 dollars per hour. This seemingly must pay for the bus, the maintenance, the gas, the driver, and this extra “dude”. A guy who sleeps. I have to imagine they work like 20 hour shifts of sitting around looking at people. Maybe they encourage people not to cheat the system, but how much is that worth, and how much can they possibly be getting paid. There are like 3,000,000,000,0000,000,00000,0000000000 buses in Beijing/China and every one has one of these dudes – are they middle class? Are others jealous? Just crazy is all.