Firecrackers woke us up this morning. I don’t know what time the first haiku of small explosions went off; I just remember the short burst, then a long one, then short again, and a few treasured moments of quiet when I pulled the covers over my head and hoped I could fall into a deep enough sleep that the next staccato burst wouldn’t wake me. It didn’t work.

The fireworks here are little more than dynamite wrapped in red paper, the remains of which lay in piles in every street and hutong today. Last night, I watched kids barely old enough to not be called toddlers holding up chains of noisemakers taller than themselves. Riding rented bikes around the city, we had to watch for mailboxes and trash bins, where other revelers had mounted bottle rockets to fire across the street and hit buildings on the other side.

From Lijiang, in Yunnan Province, Part Two of my Winter Holiday. Still no beaches.

I almost skipped the New Year in China. This is a family holiday, and someone else’s. My original plan was to plow straight south into the tropics. Somehow we ended up on a bus north to Zhongdian (a very long post is coming on that, with photos). We’re working our way back down from the Tibetan Plateau, and the last three days have been spent in Lijiang.

Yesterday made all the long bus rides filled with smokers and people shouting into cell phones worthwhile.

We ate late, after a day of biking around town and an evening of wandering through back alleys, letting the flowing crowd push us in the red-tinted parade of celebrants. The outdoor barbecues were all roasting whole pigs. Whether that’s a normal tradition in Lijiang or just done because it’s the Year of the Pig, I can’t say. If it’s the latter, I’d rather not be here for the Year of the Rat. Maybe in the Dragon’s year they just imagine a plate of mythical meat.

Whatever the reason, the pig was delicious, cooked just enough to be soft and succulent, with a plate of spice on the side that added the right flavor in small portions but could just as well be left off. Afterword we wandered more, being snap-happy with our digital cameras among the street performers and bobbing lights. We were in an over-priced bar for the countdown, where they charged 25 RMB for a small beer, so I went dry.

The bar flies counted down to midnight twice. I’m not sure what clock the first one referred to; the second followed CCTV. A few minutes into Sunday, the bar went quiet and most of the denizens slipped out into the suddenly-calm night.

As we made our way back to the hotel, we passed families dumping paper money and other sacrifices into self-contained bonfires. A cook was washing dishes next to one of the canals flowing along the hutong walls. The red lanterns were still glowing, but the streets grew silent quickly.

Until, of course, the next burst of firecrackers. Xin Nian Kuai le!

Side note: I hate this net bar. The smell of urine is wafting over from the squatter just outside and the place is freezing. My fingers stiffen up in this weather and it’s taking forever to get a sentence typed. Also, the only music here is a stupid song about the city that plays non-stop on repeat. I can’t imagine anyone loving Lijiang enough to hear this song more than once. Hopefully, I’ll find someplace better in Jinghong or Laos or Thailand or wherever I stop next. Expect lots of photos soon, and a bit about Shangrila.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 6:27 am and is filed under roadside blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.