There were chickadees
out my window this morning that were going at it. I think they may have been fighting over the
scraps of persimmons that still hang from the tree. New Years steadily rolls in across the
land like inertia. Back up north
and I don’t know why but it really feels different. Perhaps it is just the
familiarity.
Today we drive across the dry plain into the mighty seat of
Chinese traditionalism, Shandong province.
I can’t think of a better place to experience Chinese New Year than off
on that formidable peninsula. There is
pollution in the soil and pollution in the air and the poor soil has been
worked and worked and over worked for so many years. There aren’t many trees. Much of the architecture is monotonous. Sometimes, driving through a foul stench will
extend for many kilometers, and one considers the people who live in that
place. Dry, silty, hidebound and it
doesn’t matter at all.
The people we are visiting are family and this is a high
holiday. The culture clings to something
absolutely lost elsewhere in this country that you can still sample and sniff
and learn from. The rituals don’t
change. Some of them are seem absurd. “We are obliged to drink any guest into
oblivion or we are not good hosts.”
Often they seem misogynist, and women can feel like chattel that
“belong” to the man’s family. But they
are also magical and resilient, having withstood not only Maoism, but now, and
for now, also post-modernity.
Tonight, near midnight we will bao dumplings and eat them.
My wife’s older brother, the oldest in the male line, will offer food to
the ancestors and welcome them to join in the feast. Three days later all the males will head to
the village where the family line hails from and at dawn they will trod out to
the ancestral grave site and light fireworks that look like dynamite to scare
away the ghost so the ancestors can safely travel back to the netherworld.
I met with a gent yesterday who was heading off with his
family to Whistler to ski this year for new years. Sometimes it is best to get out of
Dodge. We’ve don that before and we’ll
do it again. But this fragile ritual is
best to expose the kids to as often as we can, because it will truly disappear
in their lifetime. People will move on,
places will be bulldozed and the “holiday” will be reduced to simply eating
frozen dumplings somewhere. And besides,
I could use a bit of auspicious 招财进宝[1] for the coming year.
And Duke Pearson has just about nothing to do with Chinese
New Year, but I don’t care. I’m a big
fan and I heard him on my headphones randomly down in Shanghai this week and it
brought a big smile to my face. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_Pearson
The man born Columbus Calvin "Duke" Pearson, Jr,
from Atlanta Georgia is a swingin pianist and beautiful composer. He played on Donald Byrd’s famous “New
Perspective” and arranged half the tunes, and I never knew it. If you haven’t heard his album “The Right
Touch” your life isn’t really complete.
I found it randomly once in Amoeba there in San Francisco and it forever
changed my musical life. It swings so
hard set it off when I go out for my runs in odd places like Poughkeepsie or
Dublin. Right now I’ve “Little Waltz”
from the 1966 album “Prairie Dog” caressing my ears.
Time to start packing
for the trip out, back in time.
[1] zhāocáijìnbǎo: ushering in wealth and prosperity (idiom and
traditional greeting, esp. at New Year); We wish you wealth and success!
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