Wealth Envy

We were warned many times that the Spring Festival season can be very difficult to survive due to the large amount of fireworks that go off night after night, hour after hour. No matter the time, someone will be lighting off fireworks. Well, we encountered the fireworks extravaganza on New Years, it went past midnight but we were able to sleep since things quieted down enough for us to fall asleep. There have been more fireworks than usual since that time but it was never to the level that we had been anticipating. Well, yesterday (Wednesday) Tammy and I were talking about how this whole thing was a little overstated since we had not yet seen the extremes that we were warned about. Word must have gotten out that some foreigners were dissing the Spring Festival fireworks because last night….it went wild.
Starting about dusk until after 1:00am, fireworks were going off with little pauses in between. Sometimes the pause was less than a minute, other times it was enough time to make you think it was over (but you found out quickly that you were wrong). The fireworks show was ON!!! These were the big bangers that you could not ignore, you heard them and some of the closer ones, you felt them. It was incredible the amount of fireworks going off (and going off, and going off). If you checked out the Wikepedia link I pasted into the last post, you would know that the 5th day of the festival is dedicated to the god of wealth. People light off fireworks to get his attention and try to obtain wealth in the upcoming year. From the show of fireworks, I think everyone was vying for some attention. Warren and Jacob have slept through all of the fireworks for every other night except last night. Warren was awake but didn’t get out of bed, he just put a pillow over his head and fell back to sleep. Jacob…he required a little more to fall asleep. We can’t complain much since he used to wake up if an insect stubbed his toe within half a block of the house. The fact that he slept through the fireworks for the past several nights was a huge change. But, last night we weren’t so lucky. Once he was up, he sat at the window and watched the fireworks we could see (you could say we have an obstructed view and you would be correct) for a little while before he headed back to bed to try and sleep. Me, I put in the earplugs I had and waited for sleep to come. I was a bit over-tired so it took awhile but eventually I went to sleep. Sometime during the night the earplugs came out and so our Chinese alarm woke us again (fireworks in the morning) when the sun came up. I thought the cold would keep the locals from celebrating as much but if this is a down year, I’d hate to see it on a normal year. It’s tough to convey the amount of fireworks and the noise but some who have spoken with us on Skype can hear them going off just like they are here. It’s a broken record but they just do things bigger here, this was the 4th of July plus the New Year’s fireworks, now double it. Not from one location but many, many locations. I find it very interesting that people that have so little can afford to spend the money to get the fireworks that they set off. I guess they would consider it an investment (similar to paying taxes, you put the money in and there’s some hoopla, some noise, some oohs and ahhs during the show but in the end BAM!!! POOF!!! It’s gone and you have nothing to show for it).
So, these foreigners have decided that we will no longer jinx ourselves and we will respect the ability of the Chinese to put on a fireworks display at any time or place, especially during one of their festivals. Now since this was a spectacle to gather the attention of the god of wealth, we found an interesting tie-in the next day. While walking to the market to pick up meat and veggies for dinner, I noticed that there was some cash that someone had dropped on the sidewalk. I saw a 5, a 10 and a 50 RMB note on the sidewalk. We chose to leave it there (didn’t want to be the greedy foreigners) but I thought to myself that someone that set off fireworks might see this as direct result of their “offering”. We looked back and saw some of the locals didn’t miss seeing the bounty and picked up the cash (for them the additional 65 RMB would be a lot of cash (probably on the order of over $400 USD). Also today when we walked over to Starbucks, there was a Maserate out in front of Starbucks. Now there was someone that perhaps didn’t need to put on the fireworks display but maybe they did it as a “thanks for the memories” moment. It’s so interesting to see the disparities in income here; you’ll see people with old raggedy bike peddling around town all the way to the high end cars (Porsche, Mercedes, BMW, etc) all in the same 15 minute walk to Xinga Plaza. China is changing and with those changes come quick wealth for some and for many others it will take time to catch up but the point is that for many, although they may not have everything they want, if they work hard they can have a better life than their parents…isn’t that what everyone wants (regardless of heritage, background or all of those other things that seem to divide us).

Friday update on the fireworks, not too much happening Thursday night after 11:00 pm, some people still letting them go but not as frequent or as many. The problem was that at around 4:00am on Friday morning, people lit off a nice string of firecrackers and boomers just as a wake up call. Perhaps there’s a rooster somewhere with a lighter (in the voice of Foghorn Leghorn, you’re doing it all wrong son). Anyhow, Spring Festival continues here in Suzhou and will go on until the end of the month...Lantern Festival (the official end to Spring Festival). Keep on checking in and see how we are handling the celebrations.