When the vicious cold winter weather begins to fade, the world begins to fill with flowers and everyone is in a more festive mood. Sitting in my cold and empty classroom in Korea now, I’m looking forward to spring more than ever. but until it arrives, here are the stories of the celebrations and beautiful blossoms I encountered in early 2008 in Yanjiao and Beijing to tide us over.

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Mar 18, 2008 at 4:47pm

This week is Ireland week. The Irish Embassy is holding a number of events to increase awareness of Irish culture in China, and one of them was a St. Patrick’s Day parade.

Not only was this the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade in China, I’m told it was the first “open” parade since 1989. There have been military parades, and a few dragon parades (which are actually street performances, not real parades). So, a big step toward openness for China and a real historic event.

Though I must admit it was painfully obvious that China doesn’t know what to do with a parade. They limited the participants in number (if not in scope), so it was quite small. They didn’t put any rope/tape up to block the parade route, there were no musicians besides the bagpipe at the lead, and they only marched about 500 yards before doubling back to their starting point.

Quite a few people came from Ireland for this special event, and they are easily identified as the crazy people wearing huge green hats. I had no idea that the holiday was as big a deal there as in the states. Before I found the people from the school here to hang out with, I met a group of Irish tourists, decked out in green clothes, big green hats and carrying large Irish flags. They shepherded me until I found my own group, quite friendly, and magnanimously declared I was Irish for the day. Although I don’t have any photos of them, there is at least one of me in their trip album somewhere.

After the parade (which started 30 min late) there was a band, a real traditional folk music group, very enjoyable, and traditional Irish dancing.

The Irish minister of something or other got up on stage with some Chinese officials to be all official and ceremonial.

There was then a “famous Chinese singer” who won the Chinese equivalent of the American idol show, no its not called Chinese idol.

Then there was a jazz band and it kind of tapered off.

We went to an Irish pub called Paddy O’Shea’s, had some drinks and chips. The irish band and the bagpiper came there too, and played for us throughout the evening, and we didn’t get back home until after midnight.

I think I celebrated this St. P’s day with more Irish people than I’d ever MET before in my life. It was fun.

Some amusing things:

1) St. Patrick having been at the ball the night before, claimed to have been drinking tequila till 7:30 that morning.

2) I ran into one of my students there, who had many questions about Irish culture, including why was the piper wearing “a dress”. That was a difficult explanation, mostly involving “shhh, don’t say that so loudly, it’s not a dress”.

Mar 24, 2008 at 5:58pm

I don’t think I have many photos of this one. We went to the Marriott hotel for Easter Sunday brunch. Super posh. I mean, I’ve been to Marriott in the states, and they’re nice and all, but I felt like I was in some weird rags to riches movie. I just couldn’t bring myself to be crass enough to snap photos in there, sorry. But take my word, it was beautiful.

The day was also lovely, mild and sunny. And we sat indoors, but near the patio’s open doors so we got to see outside and have a nice breeze without suffering the sun in our eyes or the smoke from the grill.

The buffet was HUGE (we’re seriously considering doing that once a month now). I ate so much seafood: sushi, sashimi, steamed mussels, scallops in the shell, smoked salmon… mmmm. So much seafood. And cheese, which is really hard to come by here, especially good cheese. There were American breakfast foods like sausage, bacon, and omelettes, but I didn’t have any. There was Chinese food; there were crepes; there was a fresh fruit smoothie station and a salad bar. There were 3 grill stations outside, ribs to die for, as well as other meat selections, a table of fine sliced meats like prosciutto etc. A desert selection of doom (though honestly there was not enough chocolate, the lemon tarts were awesome) and a fondue station. And while I believe that SOME of it was special for Easter, they do this every Sunday. it was about 300 kuai, so 40$, not cheap, but sooo good.

We puttered there till 5 pm (the buffet stopped at 3:30, we just lingered over last cups of coffee, champagne etc), then headed to a tiny little bar in a hutong some way away, where we wiled away the evening discussing politics (mainly American). They had flavored rums there, and I got one ginger and one orange clove… very smooth and very nice.

I had to duck out earlier than most, and got home rather later than I wanted to, but it was still a nice day out, and hopefully the next late night bar excursion will be on a Saturday.

 

2017 Note: Oh the days before Instagram. I can hardly imagine being ashamed of taking photos of my food,or a restaurant, or a buffet table these days. The last time I went to a very posh buffet, I actually ran around with my camera to get pretty pictures of the tables before they were attacked by guests before I even got my first plate of food. I wrote more than 7,000 words about my food experiences in Bohol in 2017 and took pictures of nearly everything I ate there. And yet, back in 2008 in China, it seemed gauche to stop and take photos in that beautiful hotel. I wonder what photo trends we’ll get this decade.

Mar 26, 2008 at 7:58pm

Yuyuantan Park

This is the gigantic park that has over 2000 cherry trees. I went today to check it out, since some of the cherries are blooming elsewhere. There weren’t a lot in bloom, and I walked around for about 3 hrs (it’s huge). I took over 100 pics (and this is without most stuff in bloom). I think these are the best of today’s. I’ll be going back in 10-14 days when I expect it to be really much fuller. A lot of the pics are closeups because the trees are still pretty bare, and most of the grass is brown, so the wider shots just don’t look very nice yet. This one is my favorite from the whole day. Unexpected bee!

Enjoy the rest of the photos!

Apr 1, 2008 at 4:23pm

I think this very well may be the student’s favorite western holiday. I woke up sleepy, cold and cranky because the weather is cold and I can’t breathe. I got to class a couple minutes late and my classroom was empty. One of my students came up to me in the hall and said (as seriously as possible) “Oh! We thought that you wouldn’t make it to class today!” which was a vaguely reasonable assumption, because I’ve been sick.

Anyway, it was an April Fool’s trick and the whole class poured out of a neighboring classroom with choruses of “happy fool’s day!” It did make me smile.

Then during the next period a group of Kevin’s students asked me to switch classrooms with them so they could play a prank on him, and thus I became a participant in the shenanigans.

Certainly a good deal of enthusiasm for April Fool’s.

April Flowers

2017 Note: In April 2008, I took a lot of beautiful photos of flowers all over the campus as well as the snow-like drifts of cottonwood trees that almost certainly added to my health troubles. I somehow never wrote anything about these beautiful trees that brightened my day as I walked past them on campus, or even about the strange hummingbird moth that I saw for the first time that year and only learned the real name of recently. I don’t know if I was too consumed with my misery to think about writing more about the flowers, but it makes me glad that I’ve changed my focus.

I still write about the hard times on occasion, but I like to spend my words on beauty and joy whenever possible. In the end, that means that I experience the joy over and over. The first time, when I’m living it, again when I think about what I want to write, again when I write, edit and proofread it, and again when I choose which photos will accompany my story. The joy becomes larger and the pain becomes smaller as time passes, and I hope that the next 10 year retrospective of my life reflects that.