Xin nian kuai le!
Romance of the Three Dumplings
Here’s my New Year’s story! I went to cook at my friend’s apartment and we all decided to go to the Bund to watch the fireworks. However, there weren’t many fireworks so we decided to go with my friends to the Yuyuan Gardens because I was up for adventure. We went to the City God Temple—which was beautiful at night—because they were having a celebration, and I swear, we were the only foreigners there! It was so intensely Chinese and it was an honor to participate in this. There’s a rare feeling you get, one in which you realize you’re experiencing something special, something that you may not experience again. You try to take it all in and cling to all the moments, appreciating them completely. We had those feelings as we wandered through the main gates, seeing only Chinese people burning incense and praying.
We burned our incense sticks, bowed, casted them into the fire, and walked around the crowded and lit courtyard. The temple was extremely crowded, so we went inside for a minute and left, but there were already police barricading it for crowd control. Then, when the clock struck 12, we were literally carried in a wave of people towards the temple, pushing the police out of the way, and it was thrilling! I loved how I was on my friend’s right side and was carried in front of her, I was facing her at one point, and then I managed to land on her left side and we were laughing the entire way. We didn’t even make it inside, but there was a second wave that pushed us inside the temple. When we made it inside we were struck by the giant gold statues, the wide old paintings on the wall, and a huge bronze bell. We went further inside and saw more statues and people praying. I also saw Guan Yu with his legendary flowing beard and Zhang Fei and Liu Bei, the three brothers. We made it out and saw more of the Yuyuan Gardens, which at night are lit up. It gave us a rare glimpse of the gardens when empty. I’m not sure when I’ll see Yuyuan Gardens empty again! We grabbed a taxi to go home and I told the driver the address. As we rode, we were telling each other “Happy new year!” and “I hope you get rich!” in Chinese, and our driver started laughing. He turned to me and asked me in Chinese if my friends were American, and I replied, “We’re all American!” He goes, “You too?” and I said yes, but inside I was surprised. Perhaps this is partly what it means to be “in and of the world,” to be able to connect to people from anywhere. He commented on how my friend kept saying everything was so pretty, and we laughed. He asked if we were university students and I said we go to ECNU.
What I could not believe though was how I was holding a conversation with a taxi driver in this way. It was all very natural, even in Chinese. This is my own impression of the experience, but our easygoing conversation made me feel, if only for a moment, as if I was from here, as if this Chinese taxi driver and I were not that different after all.
When he dropped us off he happily yelled out the window, “Xin nian kuai le!” and we said it back to him and watched as he drove away. I could only get a blurry picture of his car as it drove off, but I have the memory.
