Chinese New Year

Happy Lunar New Year! The Chinese virtually ignore January 1 and instead celebrate their own New Year a few weeks later. This week-long celebration includes a countdown to midnight on a specific day, but it also is marked by grandiose displays of fireworks and indoor and outdoor decorations.


The fireworks displays in Beijing are completely home-grown. Citizens buy their stash of fireworks, just like people do in the U. S., except they purchase 10 times more stuff. There's no organized display set-up by a bank or radio station. Chinese folks simply take their fireworks to the nearest parking lot, curbside, or street, and light the fuse. During countdown night, the fireworks begin at around 11:45 p.m. and last continuously for a solid half-hour. Then, for the next week, all you hear is a dull roar and the occasional outta-nowhere series of blasts.


Since Beijing is a real urban environment, some of the fireworks don't rise above the 10th floor of the nearest high rise apartment or office building (no one shoots from the roof). The folklore goes that the loud noise scares away evil spirits and clears the way for good luck for the new year. I tried to explain to my co-workers that in the U. S., the sound of firecrackers is indistinguishable from gunshots, so personal fireworks displays are "illegal" in many parts of America. Besides, we believe evil spirits can be dispatched more quickly and effectively using bullets.

I Have A Vacuum Cleaner

I have a vacuum cleaner. And I'm not afraid to use it.


You would not believe how hard it was to find this, the Philips 900 watt Mini-Vac. In most of Beijing, cleaning the street is done with a simple pile of twigs tied to a stick. I'm no student of history, but I can almost swear that Englishwomen used a better broom 400 years ago, at least until they were found out and burned at the stake. Then again, those crude cleaning tools also were said to have enabled the power of flight, but that's another story.


After midnight, you might see an old street sweeper truck, gilding the gutters along Beijing's major highways, but it is a losing battle. For a series of reasons, this is one of the world's dirtiest cities. It's only a few hundred miles from the Gobi Desert, so sand gets blown in on a daily basis. Then, there's the usual grit and grime which is typical of a big industrial city. But why and how the dirt gets into my apartment is an absolute mystery. I've lived in big cities in the U. S., and I've never had dirt pile up...PILE UP...in the corner of an apartment within the space of 48 hours. Fortunately, the apartment is fitted hardwood and tile floors, because wall-to-wall carpet would have no chance.


I used the lame broom-and-dustpan method of cleaning the floors for 8 months before I finally located and purchased a mini-vac, a "dust buster" that is standard equipment in almost every home in the developed world. This thing produces a decent amount of suction that lets me attack piles of dirt with ease. Like the message on the box says, it "Gives a Good Result Fast!" It also packs a killer recoil. The 900 watts of power forces the handle to do the kind of gymnastics underage Chinese Olympians can only dream about. I've got to tape both of my wrists before I hit the power switch.


The good news is that it works. The bad news is it keeps me from hiring someone else to clean my apartment for me, which is apparently the option most foreigners use instead of deploying the unyielding power of the mighty mini-vac. Made here in China, by the way.

Take Beijing Taxi

Almost exactly one year ago today, the first Beijing resident I met was a taxi driver who ripped me off to the tune of 400 RMB (60 USD) for a short ride from the airport to my hotel. Welcome to China.


Ever since that day, I've had a love-hate relationship with the men and a few women behind the wheel of various Hyundai Elantras, Volkswagen Jettas, and other fine automobiles. But the basic fact is, it would be impossible for me to get around Beijing without them. As professionals, they truly do a better job navigating the streets, roads, and expressways than the typical Beijing motorist ever could.


After surviving two crashes and skating through near-misses too numerous to mention, I simply must still give proper respect to the taxi drivers and their immaculate, well-maintained vehicles (how else could the Elantra 5-speed manual transmission be so nimble in bumper-to-bumper traffic? I mean, who knew?). Not only that, but after 12 months, I also need to give them credit for avoiding practically each and every man, woman, child, bicycle, tricyle, pedicab, rickshaw, ox cart, horse-drawn rolling fruit stand, motorscooter, motorcycle, illegally-licensed truck, car, bus, and other taxi-driving scum on the road.


Any suggestion you may have heard that Beijing taxi drivers spent months learning English skills to welcome foreigners to the Olympic games was absolutely untrue. And now that the Games are long past, the drivers have all forgotten whatever English skills they never learned in the first place. But consider this: you'll stand a better chance finding an English-speaking taxi driver in Beijing than in any large city in the United States. True.