snap crackle pop

Xinnian kuaile!

I've decided Chinese New Year is the holiday of choice. It takes the best things from all the different holidays and puts them at the time when you most need one.

For starters, it's got: designated family time (Thanksgiving), hongbao (which is like Christmas only better because it's MONEY, no stressful shopping or unshopping required), comfort food (a general holiday staple), consecutive days of celebration (Hanukkah), staying up late (New Year's), annoying songs (Christmas)... it's great.

The jury is still out, however, on firecrackers (a la Fourth of July). Every few minutes or so for about three days straight you hear this noise in varying degrees of loudness. *Note: onomatopoeia-ization is approximate.* BOOM BADA BOOM BOOM RATATATA BOOM BOOM BOOM boom BOOM. Then a car alarm goes off. You think, thunder? Building collapse? Blitzkrieg?! Nope, just another round of firecrackers.

The Chinese can't have full conversations with each other during Spring Festival because they get cut off by the racket. You could stage an invasion or machine gun massacre and no one would bat an eye. No one gets any REM sleep, and pyromania and hearing loss run rampant. It's insane, but also kind of awesome.

And it keeps going. Not only all night, but the next morning they have to fire away in front of every business ever. You think it's loud a few blocks away, wait until they decide to unroll a freaking tire of red gunpowder in front of the restaurant where you are unwittingly eating your morning baozi. It's to scare off not only evil, I suspect, but anyone who values their intact eardrums.

The gory aftermath.

But everyone likes the dragon? lion? parades. (Someone please help me out because I can't tell the difference between the two to save my life.) Behind the dancing blingy creatures follows what seems to me to be a junk percussion ensemble and some apathetic teenagers in glittery pants having a smoke. They prance/clang/slouch through heaps of smoldering red confetti into a new year.

新年快乐!

Bonus: my fav New Year song. The video's rather kitschy, but careful, it's catchy.