Loopy New Year

With 5,000 years of history, you'd think China would come up with a more sophisticated way of celebrating Lunar New Year.

Something beautiful. Something creative.

But the Lunar witches have the following three ingredients in their Chinese New Year cauldron:

1. sulphurous, dangerous, ear-splitting, pointless firecrackers. don't stop till you drop, sonny boy. they were banned in China until 2005.
2. Presents that range from cartons of teeth-rotting sweet milk to the liver-rotting shiny cases of rice wine.
did i mention eggs? 
3. Celine Dion singing in Chinese on the CCTV new year gala variety show!

in Hong Kong Chinese New year is rung in with flower shows, lion dances, and temple fairs. 

"You're wasted," I said to a very drunken Chinese man in Aili bakery. "I'm wasted," he parroted swaying ever so slightly as I bought my sliced wholewheat loaf. 

"Have you been at the baijiu (rice wine)?" I asked in Chinese. 

"Yes of course," he smiled. "All Chinese men must drink at New Year."

Indeed they must!

Here are some shots of the debris on my campus, the morning after. I'll leave you to guess which one is Celine's fault.

Exiting my apartment building

The entrance to my mansion

Cultural hegemony

Practicing depth of field. Empty firecracker crap

A nice tree. More depth of field practice. Pretty good if I say so myself.

A university building with smelly toilets

haunted university. pocket shot.

collateral damage

Swinging Xining

You've heard of the Swinging Sixties. Well they have nothing on Xining: the city of swingers. And Hui Muslims. Yes there are more mosques in this city than you can waggle a white skullcap at but in the meantime here are some white, black and pink shots of the swinging city. All snaps were taken on a Samsung child's smartphone with the snazzy little Vignette app for Android (available here for free).

Xining pretending to be Paris: Thoughtful man on bench, Qi Yi Lu, Swinging Xining

Swinging Xining cares for nature

Swinging Xining embraces alien cyclists

Kumbum Monastery: a teaser for the next post...

Xining Snaps!

I'm not referring to a giant bending over, taking both ends, and cracking the city in two. 

Rather, I mean, we took our cameras out and snapped some photos.

It started off as a typical winter morning - bleary, grey skies of underpant grey.

Here's the front gate of our university. A friend studying in the UK has herons on an idyllic small lake on her campus. We have runaway Siberian hamsters, open drains bubbling with sewage and undercover cops on ours!

We took the 35 to the bus station or རླངས་འཁོར་འབབ་ཚགས་for those in the know.

Behind the Tibetan market is a large complex of corrugated shop fronts selling giant packs of biscuits (I use the word biscuit in the loosest possible sense - think of chemical wafers), cartons of juice (again juice in the loosest sense of the word -- the closest those drinks came to a fruit was when someone flicked cigarette ash on them in the factory),  sacks of tea, and big boxes of firecrackers and fireworks. Nasty things. So I took a photo of something else red. 

Zooming through these narrow market alleyways were goods-laden mini-tractors, roaring like they were -- as my friend noted -- in a James Bond movie car chase. Teenaged drivers whooping in boyish, albeit reckless, delight. It was too much for my fragile nerves so after a quick snap of this political blackboard we left this shopping heaven...

...for another building site. This is Xining's old and new train station. Currently under construction, here it is next to the dry, tiled river. Sadly it won't be finished for another few years. Wikitravel says it is being readied for a new high speed rail access to Lanzhou and Urumqi!  

On the way east out of Xining you can see new rail tracks being laid down. 

Inside the bus station of blue plastic seats and grubby travellers, there are two very good Tibetan bookshops. I bought the "Government Officials Guide to Spoken Amdo!" from a lovely Amdo woman who wore the hint of lipstick and smiled lots.

Healthy living is alive and kicking in Xining. Check out this bike tied up opposite one of the snack stalls (I use the word snack very loosely). 

Across the other side of the city is where the KFCs live. 

Here is the local paper seller and the busy bus stop nearby my gym. You get alsorts waiting here. Including me.

That's Xining snapped for you!

Happy New Year Xining

We turned the page of the Gregorian calendar last night. Now we are in 2013.

Obediently, Xining also saw in the New Year with a splash of fireworks that started at 11:55 and sputtered out about 10 minutes later. 

I was pleased to see a good range of colours -- I even spotted a cheeky purple shower.


They were genteel. As is only fitting.

We saw the New Year in a very un-Xining-like wine shop/bar overlooking Kunlun Bridge, Xining's answer to Sydney Harbour Bridge. 

Quaffing a sexy Australian Syrah, helped down with chunks of edam and hard-core home-made Muslim potato crisps.

The moon was as full-bodied as our wine, hanging in the sky like an everlasting firework!

It was a delight.

That's new year in Xining for you!

Xmas Briefs in Xining

Just a few days after doomsday, we have Xmas. 

Unable to come up with a coherent narrative for this most western of festivals on the cusp of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau, I will summarise in a list of sorts:

• cutlets of bony fish
• half-knitted scarves
• sparklers on a stolen pine tree
• a blessed silversmith from Henan with his Mary Kay helper
• a four minus one cheese pizza
• a bastard freezing walk, a runaway bus and a disco taxi
• a lama playing fur ball
• three colours: cointreau and ORANGE, GREEN dropped in SILVER, and an apple in a box.

Gangnam Style in Xining

On a chilly Friday evening in Xining, a week before Xmas, a festive party was held for the foreign students and teachers of our university at one of the swankiest resorts in town, the 2-star Xining Hotel.

Oh, yes.

Staff had spent the night before decorating the main dining hall. A bemused santa stood in the doorway, and tinsel and balloons wobbled in the hot air spiralling up from the hot plates of the pink-faced noodle-makers. 

The backdrop to the stage was a map of the world with flags marking those countries from which the university could claim to have students and teachers.  I remember the Union Jack (of course), Ireland, and Sudan. 

If the size of the flag was in proportion to the number of students/teachers -- which it wasn't -- the South Korean Taegeukgi should have been a giant number. Most of our students are South Korean (and suspect missionaries) complete with children, tennis racquets, and of course the word of God. 

The Xmas Sacrificial Lamb

It was touching, as a lot of effort had gone into this party which was gloriously free of pomp and circumstance and the word "talent". 

Some of the foreigners performed but happily there was no national anthem or painful renditions of Tang Dynasty poetry. Instead we had a very hot Mongolian dancer, a very lovely pipa solo, African Gangnam Style and an appalling YMCA dance in which YMCA was inconceivably misspelled in body parts. 

The Hot Mongolian

When most of the guests had gone and the staff were beginning to clear away the dirty plates and smeared glasses, someone put Gangnam style back on. It sparked a wondrous free-for-all on the stage. A couple of the waitresses, who were clearly Gangnam stylees, got right into it -- sexy lady! Even our Tibetan teacher did a little horse trot which she skillfully morphed into the windmill style dance beloved of all Tibetans everywhere. One chef trotted across the stage to a burst of applause.

It brought tears to my eyes.

That's Gangnam Style for you. Xmas in Xining (part two!).

Xmas in Xining

It's not often you get a chance to alliterate Xining. 

While it's not uncommon to find Santa Claus and Christmas trees all year round in Xining -- tucked into corners, dusty and forlorn, baubles barely moving in the Qinghai-Plateau breeze, sad remnants of yesteryear -- as the holiday season approaches, upgrades are paraded for discerning shoppers and curious kids. 

Here are two recent sightings!

First, the freshest. This little fellow lives in the BHG Mall -- advertised as Xining's Beijing-style shopping mall. There's a modern cinema on the second floor -- only showing Chinese movies I believe -- while on the first floor are many of the chain fashion stores familiar to anyone in tier 1, 2, and 3 cities in China -- Vera Moda, Jack Jones and of course Hong Kong-owned chemist, Watson's. In the basement is a large posh supermarket which happily sells Spanish imported wine for RMB 70, Belgian fruit beer and that delicious brew, Hoegaarden, every monk's favourite tipple.

And as early as November, this festive display popped up in one of Xining's many branches of KFC (McDonald's has  yet to flip a burger here).

That's Xmas in Xining for you! (Part One!)