happy new year knot

i did not buy this, though I did hang it

all the wrappings

So, jiao zi. Little boiled meals in a wrapper. Sometimes steamed. Or fried (reverse order for deliciousness).

In the north of China, where people are serious about things made of wheat flour, jiao zi come in all sorts of different flavors, are wonderfully thin-skinned, and (everyone agrees) just much better . . . than our southern China imitations. Here it's all standard pork-and-green-onions, mainly, but such a TRADITIONAL spring festival food that EVERY SINGLE person and family must must must eat jiaozi on the eve of new year. It represents union and unity for the family . . . especially if you sit around jovially wrapping them together.

What I hadn't thought about before this year, was all the wrappers that get made and sold in the noodle shops on THAT ONE DAY. There are people who make the simple (flour and water) dough at home, roll it into logs, pinch off small pieces, roll those into neat circles - homemade jiao zi wrappers . . . but A LOT of people will be buying the wrappers pre-made.

The shop across from the bakery was already going full-force at 7 pm on the 29th. They had four people working together - rolling out sheets, cutting, packing, feeding scraps of dough back into a machine that tore them up, and then another to start the process all over again.

When I left the bakery after 11 pm I stopped by this little noodle shop and asked if I could take some pictures. I asked them how long they'd work that night. They said they'd be there 'til daybreak.

This machine rolls out sheets and sheets of dough:

The sheets are stacked up maybe 20 thick or so, and he uses a can-shaped metal cutter to slice down through them for a pile of perfect circle wrappers.

he's literally going to be doing this all night . . .

grandpa, who was sort of dozing outside, got called inside to help with the packing.

outside I counted six more plastic-lined crates like this one, empty and ready to be filled by dawn

a removed participation

On the last day of the Chinese new year, I abandoned Chloe and all the kind invites from friends, and spent ¥158 for a small room in the four-star hotel near my apartment downtown. I opted against the cheapest option in the place, which supposedly had no window. In my room the window was about ten feet wide and the remaining wall just a foot or two beyond that. The bed was so wide it looked square, and made me wish I had someone to share it with. Okay, the someone was specific, and memories from the birthday stay with Justin at Fengyashan ringed my evening.

When I'd showered and warmed my body in the luxury of central heating, I wandered down to the basement-level Uni-mart to push unhurriedly through the last-minute new year shopping crowds. I bought the candy I was supposed to buy, and wasabi crackers to eat with cheese. For a few minutes I considered a smallish bottle of Great Wall at Uni-Mart, but decided I didn't want to drink wine alone. I ended up with apple juice, Sprite, and a Heineken that a girl in the 21st-floor teahouse opened with her teeth just after eleven.

There were many episodes of Deadwood, as planned, but I paused Al Swearengen's rant at ten-minutes-to-midnight so that I could open the window and fully take in the explosions ping-ponging back and forth across the city. There were loud, booming displays that made my heart race. There were smaller and more-distant pops that were perfect circles blooming from behind this building, from the edge of the river. There were the slow, rhythmic shoooms and sizzles of the try-this-at-home cardboard tube fireworks . . . arcing up from unseen hands, from windows and rooftops in tight housing compounds. I thought of Sam last year scaring me to death by shooting his at the apartment buildings fifty feet away.

It all came through my window in a great crackling rain, this exuberant celebration. I laughed and then cried as I looked out over the city which I, in Justin's words, “have complicated feelings about.” All these millions of people, unified for these few moments by these blasts of light and sound by which they welcomed the new year. I thought something about how ghosts and devils would be scared far from this city tonight, and then, of americans god blessing the usa and how we're all so sure we've got this stuff covered.

From the hotel's western windows I could see other fireworks watchers at the complex across from Nangao. They were still silhouettes in the full-length windows of their balconies, backlit by yellow light, and in the reverberating city they seemed warm and quiet - like I felt.

I went barefoot and pajama-bottomed back up to the teahouse to look out their floor-to-ceiling windows. But onto the wooden walkway and across the shallow little pond, there were two feet below a curtain-wrapped figure in the shadowy section near the windows - probably an employee sneaking time on his cellphone - so I retreated.

The forty or fifty guests that I'd seen before midnight were gone (back to their rooms, I suppose) and the employees were playing pool and pulling chairs round to watch TV, so I padded back down the stairs. The fireworks went on steadily . . . it was 12:15 by the time I got back to the plague in Deadwood . . . and they were still going after 1:00.