Chinese New Year has finally arrived! We’ve been hearing sporadic fireworks for days, but this makes everything in the past look like child’s play. There isn’t one big show put on by the city as far as we can tell. It seems like everyone buys a huge box of shells and shoots them off whenever they feel like it, wherever they feel like it. If you took the St. Louis 4th of July fireworks show, multiplied it by at least 100 and spread it all over the city, it might come close to the way the Chinese do fireworks. The disregard for safety is probably the most amazing part. In the morning all the walls they’ve been set next to are completely charred, and there are most likely quite a few injuries. If you look out your window, you can seem them bouncing off of high rises right before they explode between two buildings.
Before the show got going, we had our farewell/New Year dinner with Dr. Atkinson as she only has two more days in China. The meal was amazing! Rivaled only by the food Susan prepared for a few of us earlier in the week. The craziest was a fish that had actually been de-boned. If the lack of bones wasn’t weird enough, the shape of the beast was. It was like a sting-ray the size of a Frisbee disc, but it had a huge bill. It was almost like a platypus with a 12-inch bill and the body of a fish. Regardless of what it looked like, it was perfectly prepared in a tasty salty sauce and completely devoured by all of us.
After dinner, we knew we had a long bus ride in the morning and would not be able to sleep for all the fireworks, leaving only one option… Go clubbing! We ended up at Mural bar, which is an Egyptian themed bar with a small dance floor, plenty of comfy booths and a live band. The keytarist did a good job of getting everyone dancing, and the ladies enjoyed free drinks while the guys had 20 kuai well drinks. Luckily, we all packed before we went out because we only had about 4 hours to nap before it was time to ship out to Suzhou!
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