Wishing everyone a very prosperous Year of the Dragon!

(h/t Nicki and Erik or the “Live 龙 and prosper” idea!)

While later today Canada will be celebrating its own anniversary with fireworks, BBQ and a whole lot of drinking; in China it’s all about the Communist Party of China’s 90th anniversary.

Not one to shy away from the spirit of things, I figured it was an excellent time to showcase one of Hainan’s most well known group of folk heroes — the Red Detachment of Women — best known for the series of ballets their story has inspired.

The Red Detachment of Women (simplified Chinese: 红色娘子军; pinyin: Hóngsè Niángzǐjūn) is a Chinese ballet which premiered in 1964. It is perhaps best known in the West as the ballet performed for U.S. President Richard Nixon on his visit to China in February 1972. Adapted from the earlier film of the same title under the personal direction of Zhou Enlai, which in turn adapted from the novel by Liang Xin, it depicts the liberation of a peasant girl in Hainan Island and her rise in the Chinese Communist Party.

The novel was based on the true stories of 100+ member strong all-female Special Company of the 2nd Independent Division of Chinese Red Army, first formed in May, 1931. As the communist base in Hainan was destroyed by the nationalists, most of members of the female detachment survived, partially because they were women and easier to hide among the local populace who were sympathetic to their cause. After the communist victory in China, the representatives of the surviving members were taken to Beijing and personally inspected and praised by Mao Zedong. Most of these surviving members currently reside in the city of Qionghai (84 survivors in 1994, 23 in 2001, 14 in 2008).

That Hainan’s most well-known and loved revolutionary heroes are a group of women is not at all surprising to me. The simple truth is that by China-wide comparison, Hainan men have to be the laziest bunch of y-chromosome carriers in the country. The women here are work horses, and are more often the ones you see doing the most physical of labour while their husbands and brothers sit in the shade of a nearby palm.

A case in point — a road was recently just built along the northern edge of the island district I live on. Now nearly finished, it provides a great view of the Qiongzhou Strait that runs between Hainan and the mainland. For three months I’ve watched the transformation of the road from a dirty construction site to a palm- and flower-lined street that’s great to wander down. And in that time I’ve seen women do virtually all the heavy manual labour while the male positions seemed limited to operating the large crane for hoisting up the palm trees (the women did all the tree positioning, hole digging and planting) and standing and staring supervising.

Interestingly enough, along this same stretch of road is a monument to the Communists resistance/defeat of the Nationalists here (there’s no actual mention on the monument of “who” was fighting — but it’s obvious from its absence that it relates to the Chinese civil war).

So happy anniversary CPC — may the next 90 be much better than the last.

You can watch the whole ballet/film for the Red Detachment of Women here.

(h/t Study More Chinese)

Last night was my sixth time welcoming in a new lunar year here in China. I always approach Chinese New Year’s Eve with a healthy dose of cynical expatations, and I’m always blown away, pun intended, with how it never fails to impress me.

True, the day(s) leading up to CNYE have every ratta-tat-tat sound sending a splash of rage through my spine for its relentless assault on holiday peace and quiet, but when the big event arrives and the entire country ignites into a cacophony of explosive sounds and visuals, it’s hard not to appreciate how truly one-of-a-kind the experience is.

It’s what I imagine people who live in Rio feel during Carnival, or Thai’s during Songkran. At its least, CNYE is annoying and at its worst down right dangerous — but it is, without a doubt, truly awesome.

Canadians are no strangers to fireworks; with decent, if conservative, showings twice a year. But it’s just not the same. No holiday in Canada is. I’m sure the same could be said for most other expat home countries.

Last night was our second time celebrating the new year in Suzhou’s expat ghetto, SIP. The laowai-saturated development zone tends to empty out over the holidays as the foreigners head for beaches and the affluent Chinese pack up the Porsche SUVs and visit their home towns. Last year’s CNYE was hit with a heavy snow, which left things a little bit quiet. Since then we’ve moved into an apartment on the 22nd floor, and I was hoping that similar weather wouldn’t ruin my chances of checking out fireworks at eye-level. I was not disappointed.

With many of our friends out of town, and Casey still too small to really appreciate the chaos and danger of cheap Chinese fireworks, we kept things low-key. Our friends Steven and Angel came over and we picked up some pre-arranged take-out from an excellent local Sichuan place (we had to book the take-out 4 days in advance as demand for the place is so high).

After dinner and some drinks we all headed down to Jinji Hu (“Golden Rooster Lake”) which is a couple blocks away. I had heard that the SIP corporation was launching fireworks from the small island in the centre of the lake and following it with their Spring Festival fountain show. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but was thoroughly impressed.

The 45 minute show featured a decent collection of fireworks a calibre above the typical family-launched stuff, and the fountain choreography was impressive. What I liked most was that I finally had a chance to use my DSLR to shoot some fireworks. There’s nothing uncommon about fireworks in China, but the very thing that makes the whole event so great, also usually makes it terrible to try and shoot — it’s complete pandemonium. The event at the lake gave me a specific spot of sky I could aim at and plenty of time to play with shutter speeds and apertures — I’m pretty slow when it comes to shooting, so extra time is key for me taking anything that’s not a blurry mess of poor crops.

Here are the results:

Fireworks @ Lakeside Park – SIP, Suzhou

Fireworks In Our Community

Maggie, Casey, Angel and Steven

Heading down to the lake Casey didn’t seem too impressed with all the noise, but only a few minutes after arriving he fell asleep and remained so for the whole event (as shown in the above picture).

After things wrapped up at the lake we headed back home and watched the annual CCTV Gala. Well, Angel and Maggie watched it, Steven and I spent most of the time poking fun at it with the rest of the China Tweeple.

As the countdown began, I headed out onto our front balcony to take in the sulphuric spectacular. If you watch about a minute into the video below, you’ll see the camera nearly fall out of my hands as the air right beside me filled with fireworks lit from down below. Nearly peed my pants — great way to start the new year.

All-in-all, it was a great time with great food and great friends. Now in the acrid afterglow, I’ll resume my dour outlook for next year’s bedlamic blast.

A couple cups of strong coffee and I’ve recovered from my 5th Chinese New Year‘s Eve in China. Despite living in Suzhou-Singapore Industrial Park (SIP) last year as well, this was the first time we celebrated the holiday in this district. Normally I would just hit Shiquan Jie (Suzhou’s bar street) for the big event, as its location in the downtown core puts it smack dab in the middle of all the action.

Because of our pregnancy, and a newborn in our tribe, we decided to keep things close to home this year and just had friends over for dinner and more friends over for drinks.

SIP, or as it’s come to be called in our little group, “China Lite”, is unique in that the majority of the residents are not locals. Many of those that live here are Westerners, North East Asians, HKers or Taiwanese. What’s more, a solid amount of the Chinese contingent are out-of-towners who simply work in wealthy Suzhou. What this means for holidays is that SIP becomes a bit of a ghost town as many head home for the holidays (or SE Asia, if you’re a laowai).

There are a lot of things that make life in SIP much, much better than many of the places I’ve lived in China, but the lack of an explosion-filled buildup for midnight is not one of them. We hedged our bets on something exciting happening down at Jinji Hu, the lake a block or two away from us, but didn’t find much after getting there. There were a few impressive displays in the distance and the night wasn’t exactly void of fireworks, but when I look back on previous years, this was definitely the tamest.

Fortunately we had what was important; friends, family, food and rum!

The other thing that might have dampened festivities was that Suzhou was hit with a relatively massive amount of icy snow last night. Walking back from the lake it was surreal seeing all the cars covered in white. Suzhou rarely gets snow, and usually the few flakes you might see fluttering through the air have disappeared before hitting the ground. But here are some pics of what I woke up to this morning:

The snow is reminiscent of January two years ago when snow virtual shut down the city.

Our dog Button hardly knows what to do with the stuff, timidly stepping on the now-crunchy and white grass to do her morning business. I’m hopeful that it might get a bit colder and give us some nice fluffy stuff so she can run and play in it, but more than likely it will just stay this icy, slushy sleet and/or melt away.

But that’s all the more reason for me to curl up in my cozy apartment and just relax on this holiday Sunday. All the best to you and yours in the year of the tiger. 春节快乐.

NOTE: Just after writing this I looked outside and large fluffy flakes are coming down — there’s hope yet for a (non-hospital-needed) snowball fight in Suzhou!

It has been wonderful being home for the holidays, and a visit that has been full of firsts. It was Maggie’s first time seeing British Columbia (as we flew into Vancouver rather than Toronto, simply for the experience and to visit family out west). It was also our first opportunity to meet my 20-month-old nephew who was born shortly after our last visit to Canada.

My nephew is not the only new addition to our clan since our last visit. My cousin and my step-brother have both had children since we were last here, and being home has given me a chance to sit down with all the somewhat-new parents and pick their brains on being first-time parents.

That experience alone has made this visit home invaluable. We have lists of recommended reading, bags of baby gear, advice layered upon advice and, perhaps most valuable, the opportunity to spend some up-close and personal time with babies and little kids — something that has given us both a much stronger sense that, despite the regular fears I imagine all new parents-to-be have, we are ready for this.

Hands down the best part of being home though came in the form of a short trip to a small office in Oakville on December 23, 2009. For Christmas my sister and my mom decided to take Maggie and I to 3D Baby Vision, a fetal imaging clinic that specializes in keepsake 3d ultrasounds.

We got the works; a 30-40 minute 3D ultrasound session, a DVD recording of the session, a CD full of images of our unborn baby, and — most importantly — gender assessment.

Due to Chinese families (particularly in rural areas) favouring boys, and because of the country’s One Child Policy; Chinese doctors and ultrasound techs are legal restricted from revealing the sex of a child so as to prevent parents from aborting the baby if it is a girl.

While there are always ways around this, having the assessment done while we are here in Canada was a simple solution, and one we were quite eager to take part in.

It’s a boy!

Or rather it will be… or should be. Due to the position of the baby, the tech could only give us 90% certainty, but said that in the 5 years of the business, she had never received a call saying she had gotten it wrong.

I was asked a lot prior to knowing the sex what I hoped he would be, and I always said I was completely impartial. More than one person told me I was lying and deep down I had a preference. I really didn’t, and still don’t. I see the benefits and challenges of either — and at the end of the day I’m just thrilled to be a dad.

That said, now that we know I can focus on what having a boy means — basically, a little me. I’m in a lot of trouble. Of course I’m kidding. I’m excited to take part in all the “father-son” things that I took part in with my dad. Playing catch, going to games, etc.

I’m also pretty keen on the fact that as the only male child in my family, having a boy means that my family name with carry on (provided he doesn’t go on to hyphenate it — but who does that, really?).

Anyway, without further adieu, here are some photos:

As mentioned above, we were also provided with a DVD of the session. It really was a nice touch, but was a bit rough. It was littered with blank screens when the tech switched between 3D and 2D ultrasounds, and also displayed a few error messages that popped up on the system. Additionally, it was overlayed with a rather cheesy soundtrack that had to go.

So, a bit of iMovie magic, and I whipped together the following (Slow? Also on Vimeo):
[flashvideo file=wp-content/uploads/2010/01/Baby%203D%20Ultrasound%20-%20Medium.mp4 /]

Sadly, the holiday cheer and baby excitement has been overshadowed a bit the last few days. My paternal grandmother died just after Christmas, and we’ll be attending her funeral tomorrow.

The grief of losing a family member is terrible. It was barely more than a year ago that my maternal grandmother died. The most painful part when she died was being so far away from everyone. In that way, I am glad we happened to be here now.

I have a wide mix of emotions over her death, and don’t have the experience with death to properly put it all to words. However, the one feeling I am confident in is that to me her death was anything but a tragedy. I cannot begin to imagine a way in which it is a tragedy for someone to live 93 years; seeing, experiencing, creating, loving and giving all that she did.

I will miss her more than I can even guess at now; I can’t even fully comprehend that she is gone. But I know that I will always remember her as the amazing person she was and the infinite number of ways her life positively influenced my own.

It is a, ultimately life-affirming, conflict of emotions feeling the kick of my unborn son one day, and losing someone I love dearly the next. Truly, c’est la vie.

And with that in mind, I’d like to wish everyone a very happy New Year. May we all discover things in 2010 which make us more fully appreciate our lives and the way we live them. My best to all of you.

Dongbei Seabug

As many of my friends pack up and head out to face the torrent of travel over the May Holiday, I’m just happy to finally have a moment to sit down and type randomness on here.

My mother-in-law arrived from Dalian Thursday evening and while Maggie and her enter day three of non-stop-family-gossip, I’m hiding out in my office and finally getting done things that have been on my todo list so long they could be sold at auction.

First things first – what the hell is that sea creature in the picture above? Never was a piece of seafood that called into question the civility of eating any of the sea’s tasty and entirely creepy looking critters more than that. Maggie’s parents, being the amazing people they are spent the night before her mom travelled here preparing an entire suitcase full of food for us.

A plate of tasty dongbei prawns

Knowing their daughter’s and her laowai husband’s insatiable love for seafood, and Suzhou’s lack of it; they packed up fried fish, squid, a bunch of the unidentified seabugs above and absolutely massive prawns (about 6″ from tip to tail). For good measure they also threw in about 5 packages of dried squid jerky (surprisingly tasty snack), a big chunk of beef, some sausages, and a few pigs feet (I love my wife, I do, but if ever there was something that called that into question – watching her chew through the hoof of my bacon would be it).

Maggie’s mom will be here for a week, which is great. I know Maggie’s parents worry about her living so far away from them, and so it’s good for her mom to be a bit of an ambassador for our lifestyle here. Already we’ve impressed her with our apartment, the relative tranquility of our neighbourhood, and the cuteness of Button (who can’t get enough of the attention she’s getting).

I’m not sure where it comes from, and I don’t know if all son-in-laws feel this way, but assuring Maggie’s parents that we’re safe, secure and sufficiently well-off always weighs heavy on my mind.

Maybe it comes from the fact that they’ve bucked many Chinese-in-law stereotypes and so graciously accepted me, a foreigner, as part of their family. Never have they made me feel different, nor have they ever criticized or “warned” Maggie about the evils of getting involved with “laowai”.

They are traditional Chinese parents in so many ways, but in this they feel a bit different, at least different from what stories I’ve heard from others. I appreciate that more than I can express, and perhaps my desire to put any fears they may have (real or not) to rest stems from that.

Tiān Píng Shān (天平山)

Me, about halfway up Tianping Shan - taken by Elvina.

And now with absolutely no segue at all — Tiān Píng Shān.

Mags and I headed to this hiking spot with friends Glen and Elvina last weekend and quite enjoyed it. Suzhou’s littered with great little day-trips that allow you to break from the haze and monotony of city life, unfortunately I don’t take advantage of this near enough.

Tiān Píng Shān, while dubbed a “mountain”, is more a big hill on the south-western fringes of Suzhou in the small hamlet of Mudu. A couple years back we headed to another big hill in Mudu called Líng Yán Shān (灵岩山), and were keen to repeat the hike (my flabby ass needs the exercise).

What we hadn’t counted on was that in an effort to attract the under-marketed to (for hiking at least) under-agers, Tiān Píng Shān was hosting a big cartoon character festival at its base. After an hour on an insanely cramped city bus, wading through crowds of kids all vying to get their picture taken with a rather poor representation of Winnie-the-Pooh was a bit to deal with.

Thankfully kids make whiny climbers and so most parents opted to keep them off the actual mountain — there were a few brave parents that balked this convention and were rewarded with having to piggyback their little split-pant nose-picker up and down the mountain.

As with every Chinese hike up a “mountain” I’ve ever been on, stairs had been carved the whole way up. Emboldened by having friends with us, we decided to off-road it a bit and found our own boulder-bounding path the majority of the way up. The trip was a lot of fun, despite forcing me to recognize just how out of shape I am. Pear-ish is a shape, right? It was also a great experience hanging out with Glen and Elvina. Glen, some may have noticed, has also recently joined the writers over at Lost Laowai.