Chinese New Year, Suzhou, and some fantastic weather

So we had the Chinese New Year on February 14th, and this was like nothing I've ever seen before. After being fairly disappointed with the fact that our trip to South (and North, if we had it our way) Korea was canceled, we at least had this to look forward to. Like I said before, there are fireworks everywhere in this city. Like serious, display style fireworks, ridiculously large and loud and explosive. These people are literally lighting them off at all times during the day, in the middle of the street. It's completely ridiculous, they are incredibly loud and dangerous and there are just firework scraps flying around everywhere. On the eve of the New Year, we were at a fairly crowded bar, and there was a torrential snow storm going on outside. This didn't stop anyone from lighting fireworks off though, and as the hour counted down we went outside and had a huge snowball fight, along with more fireworks.

A couple days after this, a group of 8 of us decided to get out of Hangzhou and do a little traveling. We went to Suzhou, about and hour and a half west of here, and basically just walked around the city and saw some cool gardens. Stayed at a pretty cool hostel, and had a wizard battle with roman candles outside of it at around 3 in the morning. The people at the hostel thought we were mental. After debating for a while over where we would go next, we decided to head to Shanghai. Only problem was that when we got to the hostel we couldn't stay because Pat and I didn't have our passports, so we hung out around the city and took a late train back to Hangzhou.

Since last Thursday we've been having some great weather. It was really getting to me, these past few months, the weather's been straight out of a cold war propaganda movie, just miserable. So having the sun out and it being around 75 was a great breath of fresh air. We've just been going down to the lake and walking around, hiked up a couple mountains as well. Definitely makes me realize why I like it here

Starbury in Hangzhou, Super Bowl Monday, and the Chinese New Year

So last Friday a friend told me to head to the basketball stadium after I got off work to see the game. The last basketball game I went to was honestly, one of the most exciting basketball games I've ever seen, with a last second dunk from my boy Rodney White to win it. This one though, was big for a different reason. As some may know, Stephon Marbury just signed with a team in a northern province named Shanxi. Ned, my friend with the tickets, had first row directly under the basket for about 7 of us. The game ended up being pretty good, with the hometown team taking it by 4. I think we got into Marbury's head, or maybe it was the Chinese screaming "MAH BOO ARY!" relentlessly that did it.

For the Super Bowl, a friend decided he would have people over to watch the game. He has a working SlingBox (read: Brother Matt, you owe me a Christmas gift), so we caught the Washington DC broadcast of the game, kicking off at 7:30 in the morning here. Getting up for it was a drag, but it ended up being a pretty good game. We did get some looks, rightfully so this time, for buying beers and McDonald's breakfast at 6:45 in the morning on a Monday, but it was a rightful reprieve, kicking off our Chinese New Year celebration.

We have off work until the 20th, and just about everything here is shut down. What I don't understand is where all of these people are supposed to get food during this time. Seriously just about every single store and shop is closed, I've been eating pasta for the last 3 days. I don't know what I'm gonna do. One thing that isn't closed though are firework stands. Pat just came back with a nice stack of explosives, and we're gonna go blow them up later. Some of these things are pretty intimidating, like 7 foot long black cat rolls that last for several minutes, or large half disks with cartoons of young Chinese kids running around playing with said fireworks. Not too worried about it, there are directions, all in Chinese, to avoid any danger. We'll figure them out

Hong Kong

So we were told that we would have to go to Hong Kong by our school in order to get our working visas. We had to fly to Shenzhen, which is the last major city in China before taking a bus to Hong Kong, going through several checkpoints along the way. When we finaly got to Hong Kong, it was incredibly apparant that we were in a very different place. The Western influence has been embraced for decades, so the place is more like New York or London than it is anywhere in China. Everyone speaks English for the most part, and there are hundreds of little things that you notice as well that make China so different. For one, we weren't stared at because we weren't the only white people on the street. Also, cars drive on the other side of the road and they actually obey traffic signals. It was nice not having to fear for my life every time I crossed the street. There is incredible food from all over the world as well. We were really only in Hong Kong for a day and a half, just to take care of our visas, so we didn't have much time to do or see anything special. We basically just walked around drinking PBR's all day and talking about how cool it was that we were in Hong Kong. After a memorable night in the Wan Chai district, we were disappointed that our time in Hong Kong was so short and we had to get back on a plane to China.

On a pretty sour note, we were informed yesterday that we wouldn't be able to go to South Korea because we wouldn't have our passports back in time from getting our resident permits made official. After weeks of us being completely transparant with our plans and intentions of leaving for the holiday, we got screwed. I'll hold off on ranting, but the way that things are done, and information is shared, on all levels, is inexcusable. Anyways, we'll try to plan a few things, maybe go to the beach town of Ningbo, and probably go to Shanghai for a few days. Definitely not happy about it, but what can you do. A common term used by expats here as a way of coming to terms with bullshit like this is "TIC: This is China."