It aint what it used to be. What is?
The Chinese New Year celebrations I was fortunate enough to have seen
there in my wife’s home town fifteen years agao, were certainly only facsimiles
of what the generations of Zhang’s there in town had grown up with in the
Shandong of the Cultural Revolution, or the Great Leap Forward, or the Japanese
occupation, or the Boxer Rebellion. But what missionaries and war, and scarcity
and ideology couldn’t kill, prosperity may have succeeded in finishing
off.
Last year we were
in Beijing. I suggested we all head out
to Shandong to join the family. But my younger brother in law and opted to take the immediate family down to China’s Hawaii
for a beachfront holiday in Hainan. I
thought of all the toothless old men in the ancestral village who pointed to
the hand drawn genealogy charts on the wall of the daub and wattle homes we
visited on Chu Er, for the chao-men ritual saying, “one old
grandfather! we all descend from one old
grandfather!” as we toasted and they proudly directed my gaze to the
chart. Wouldn’t they all be lonely this
year? No one to knock on their door for
the second day of the celebration.
Today, this year,
we’re in an enormous overbuilt hotel, on the border of Hebei and Shandong. Once again, my younger brother-in-law has
arranged a special deal. We’ll all meet
there and everything is on the house. I
have strong opinions about Thanksgiving and Christmas but for Lunar New Year,
it’s not my place to say much of anything to anyone but you, my dear reader. So, my daughter’s and I, we’re along for the
ride, reinterpreting the tradition along with everyone else.
They’ve done a nice
job with the place, I suppose. There’s a big lake that’s nearly frozen
over. There is some pleasant landscaping
that is probably high-tone in the spring. There’s a bridge we drove over the
lake to get here that creates a graceful span.
The rooms are five-star hotel rooms with whatever you’d expect to find
at such a place in China. But the joint,
built for thousands is empty. There are perhaps
two other guests here that we can see.
Now, for the third
banquet meal since we arrived, we pile downstairs into the large baojian room. Enjoying a dry period me-self, I explain to
everyone for the third time that I will not be drinking. I must endure about five minutes of pleading
and cajoling around this but soon things move on. Drinking toasts, and drinking rituals descend
into drinking games. Count from one to
seven, and then, repeating seven return down to one as we go around the
circle. If you mess up you drink a
shot. Uproariously fun for most of the
table, it’s a bit tedious, supping shots of H2O.
An in law, a new
relative I’m meeting for the first time is a retired army officer. He has opinions. I only catch flashes of what he’s asserting, but
they’re hot flashes. I grow eager to
debate him. “No.” I suggest
abruptly. “If you joined the army in 74,
then you know the PLA wasted ten years of potential modernization during the
Cultural Revolution, when your army should have properly invested.” This of course sets off spirited debate about
the utility of guerilla war and whether or not China “lost” during its own
invasion of Vietnam in 79. Every adult
besides me is sauced and ready with contributions.
I ought to deescalate and I look to do so. Raising his glass to toast him, as a young
fella ought to, I ask him who (yes, yes, of course, besides Mao Zi Dong) who is
the Chinese general you most respect.
This does the trick and waxes starry eyed and says, that while Peng Dehuai
was the general who Americans generally acknowledge as impressive, for having
beat the Beautiful Country to a standstill, it was Liu Bocheng, who was the Chinese, fighting-man’s
general. “He’s my man.”
I checked the name
once and checked the name twice. I
hadn’t heard of him. And as the
conversation moved on, I quietly looked up the general. “China’s Mars” so named by the German surgeon
who removed the bullet from his un-anesthetized head with seventy-three
different incisions. I learned about his
close relationship with Deng Xiaoping and his many disagreements with the Chairman,
over tactics. I found a quote or two and
was just about ready to reenter the fray, asking the older in-law how he could
reconcile Mao and Liu’s disdain for one another . . . but I, appropriately,
surely, let it go. There was another
toast being made to a healthy, prosperous New Year.
Friday, 02/16/18
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