The night I arrived back in Chengdu the New Years festivities were off the charts- fireworks were visible in any direction, from sparklers to the kind your used to seeing miles away on the Fourth of July. Theres a reason they're normally seen from far away, but most Chinese don't know it. They could have been set off by anyone able to get there hands on them-children, high schoolers, middle aged men or hunched and fragile old women.
The airport taxi cab driver took one look at us and, obviously conscious of the fact that he was missing the most important holiday of the year, took off at a thousand miles an hour to get us to our destination. It felt like racing down a nascar track during the opening ceremony of the olympic games. The sky was filled with the hues of 600 different colored fireworks hurriedly set off by a mulitude of Chengdu-ers for miles around. The excitement in the city was palpable. Right then, in homes all over China, families sat together eating a meal in a house. Many of them had broken there backs to return to their family home, sometimes traveling hundreds or thousands of miles. Imagine, 2 billion people deciding they want to return home for the holidays, it is a train attendants nightmare.
Katie D. and I naturally decided to stay away from traveling after that taxi ride, we needed time to rest. The past two weeks had been a non-stop culture ride and it was time to get back to our somewhat normal lives in China.
No comments:
Post a Comment