Whew! What a week. It was my first full week of classes and I am excited about every one of them. My Chinese professor is really friendly and my professors in Sino-American Relations, History of Modern China, and Chinese Political Reforms are all very interesting people. I was worried I wouldn't be able to understand their Chinese accents but it seems I'm managing quite well. In Chinese class I am learning important phrases like "turn left taxi driver" and "I don't want any more dumplings." The most impractical one we learned happens to be the title of this post. I finally know how to express my feelings about Hugh Heffner.
On Monday night, one of our advisors/program directors told us that there was a Lantern festival and that we should definitely make a journey into town to see it.
Never having been to a lantern festival, we imagined that there would be thousands of lanterns strung up in the trees, and festival food. We were wrong.
After an hour and a half on the metro and another hour of walking back and forth in front of Tian'anmen square looking for the "lantern" festival, we found nothing and decided to go home. Meanwhile the fireworks dangerously exploding in between houses and the subway stations and the skyscrapers turned out to be the main attraction. The Lantern Festival is just a time when people go out, walk around, and admire the fire works on the last night of New Year's celebration, even though these fireworks have been going off continually for a month now.
In Beijing, there are very few laws regarding the use of fireworks during the New Year celebration. This means that fireworks go off in the street and directly over your head. I have no idea how many people die each year from a firecracker exploding in their brain, but I'm sure there are quite a few casualties. We were lucky enough to make it home that night without singing our hair.
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