getting tired of fireworks?!

Happy happy 牛 year!

a week before the new year, fireworks go off here and there sometimes, made me want to run out every time and follow the sound to its source


the night before new year's day, fireworks set off continuously from 8pm, till past midnight, with the highpoint from midnight to 1am, by many families who bought their own fireworks,


families after families drove up with trunk load of fireworks to the designated spots, some couldn't even close their trunks

there were fireworks being set off in all four directions from where I was standing


the neighborhood sounded and looked at a battleground, with thick air of sulfur floating at the height of street lamps

the lingering fireworks lasted till almost 3am

then came the"ceasefire" for the most part of the first day of the new year

then it started all over again, the first night, then the second night, sure it will go on for the rest of the week
how did people get so rich, have so much money to burn off???

Out to the Northeast, Harbin

Interior finish work is pretty much done on my parents' apartment, but I don't want to leave until they are moved in there, so I opt for a trip to Harbin, the "ice city" of China, known for its annual ice and snow sculptures festivals that last for 2 months and russian architectures, something I have wanted to see since I was little. Of course Harbin is cold enough in the winter, when people talk about temperature, they say 9 or 15 or 20 C, but it is always minus, so they just skipped it. Needless to say, I dressed up myself and ended up looking like a bear with all these clothes.


The ice are taken from the frozen river that run through the city and many life-size buildings like churches, chateaus, pagodas are built out of thes ice blocks every winter for the Ice Sculptures Festival that last about 2 months. Great to view at night, when colorful lights embedded in them are lit up, a true winter wonderland.

The snow sculptures festival is newer and has smaller sculptures and are more artistic. They are great to see during the day against the blue sky.

Clicking on the title will take you to more pictures.

a collage of chinese traditional dances

by many women in my dance classes

Hardware vs. Software

Beijing might be full of hardwares - nice buildings, efficient transportation systems, public bathrooms everywhere, products of all sorts you would want (may not be able to afford), but the softwares still can't catch up with the ever popping hardwares.

So, what I do I mean by software - behaviors, how we treat others
people still spit wherever (I would show you a picture, but I don't want to gross you out), I grimce at every sound of someone loudly clear his throat then followed by a hearty spit;

I stand at the middle of the door of a subway train, when the door opens at the station, there will always be someone right in front me thinking that he/she will get on the train fastest that way;

I can't shake the habit of letting at least one other passenger to get on the bus before me, the result, I often end up being the last one getting on ;

One screams loudly "waiter" with a tone of a commander, I still can't get myself to do that, so I often wait for one that pass by which can take a while;

"No smoking" signs are everywhere in restaurants, but just like many laws and regulations, they are there, but we don't follow, because there aren't enough agents to reinforce these laws, and let alone agents to prosecute law breakers;

many people in the service industries treat foreigners better;

we still have a great need to show off our richess with cars, everything we carry that people can see;

strange, my memory of software of this city seem to be better when I was growing up here, or at least we were droned about it all the time (slogans and propagandas of a socialist country influenced by our confucius philosophy), so one would think that twenty years later, there would see much more improvement. But I wonder that 80's and after, we focused much more on economic growth therefore results of all these nice hardwares, but left no time and energy to worry much about softwares. So are softwares something we can only think about when average citizens attain middle class? or when the population reduce back down? Population in Beijing, in China, sure has increased tremendously in the last twenty years.

Being someone of 70's generation, I am confused with what I see now compare to what I was taught when I was little - the socialist dogma, to now most things are about money, how to make them with little or no social conscience (just think about the contaminated milk powder, the unsafe mines, and money paid to reporters so they won't report all the mining accidents) and how much one has. The socialist dogma still exists, the slogans and propaganda are still heard, the governement still control the medias to disperse praises of the one and only party, how they follow the socialist dogma, yet things on the ground say much different stories.