I dropped my friend Li Hong Yen at the train station last night and there was a sea of Chinese people there heading home. Well actually not quite heading home, waiting to head home on a train where they sometimes have to stand for dozens of hours.
It was shocking to see all those people camped out there but what was more shocking is that they weren’t mad to be waiting around like that. They seemed happy actually.
To better explain Chinese New Year in Guangdong Province (you might know it by its old name, Canton, i.e. Cantonese) you have to start from the beginning.
When an average Chinese person reaches working age in a rural area they have a few options: farm, get married/have kids, or go work in a big city at a factory and then move on to a better job.
Doing this last one, is to “go out”, or Chuqu.
I asked my friend Li Hong Yen about this time period and she said “I finished school. I had not much to do, not so much money or skills. I was bored. So I went out.”
The interesting thing about going out in China is that so many people do it that it’s an ingrained part of their culture. Parents in the US get worried when their kids go away to a sanitized University– imagine setting out on your own to work in some dirty factory for god knows how long. They don’t feel sorry for themselves about it nor do they think it’s weird. If you stay in your hometown you have a pretty good idea about how that will be, going out means endless possibilities.
One thing they report is that their parents constantly ask them when they’ll be married and to only marry someone from their province. To put this into perspective, imagine a girl from Davenport, Iowa goes to New York City and her family tells her to only date boys from Western Iowa while in NYC.
Often they work in factories, and it sucks, but it’s only for a year and to save money. Most factory workers are women, most are between 17-19. In some sense, it’s too bad that the US thinks we’re too good and clean to have factories. I think there’s a lot of aimless 18 year olds that would be happy to work at a factory while they sorted out what it is they want to do. Li Hong Yen worked at a factory, “We made shoes” she said like you might say you just made cookies. Someone needs to make shoes, after all. Now she works in merchandising for an import/export company and lives in an apartment and not a dormitory.
In China, leaving home, family and friends and working yourself silly a thousand miles away is seen as a rite of passage.
Case in point, there’s a Taiwanese song from 1979 (the year I was born, incidentally) called “The Olive Tree” that is about Taiwanese people traveling far away for school and work. Because of all the Chuquing going on in mainland China it became a hit with those who had chosen to go out.
The main chorus is:
Don’t ask me where I’m from. My hometown is far away. Why wander so far? For the olive tree in my dreams
So i’m back at the train station and there’s all these people and they are sleeping, reading books, playing checkers, talking, cooking food— just hanging out waiting. While this seems like it sucks, I think past generations of Americans in the military have gone through this and made some of the best bonds and memories of their lives. It’s this struggle that makes people happy, ultimately, I think. Modern America has reduced, and continues to, reduce the amount of struggle people have to endure. But without the struggle we have no payoff. We need a payoff.
Today I called Li Hong Yen to see how she was getting on (16 hours into her train ride) and she said that she had to call me later because she was playing cards with some people on the train.
When she arrives in her hometown, along with her other family who’ve traveled a comparable distance, everyone will let loose and party for the next 10 days or so because they probably won’t see each other until next spring festival and it was so hard to get there.
This got me thinking about the people I know from Canada and how they are such fun-loving, satisfied people and I think I nailed it down to the fact that in Canada is very cold for most months out of the year and there’s only a short time when you can be outside and enjoy the summer weather.
I contrasted both of these thoughts with being from Los Angeles where have a surfeit of good weather (and presumably free time that is easily had) and because of that we don’t enjoy our free time or our good weather. Wealth is wasted on the old and youth is wasted on the young.
Back to the Canadians, their version of The Olive Tree is a song by Ian Tyson that Neil Young (a Canadian also) did a better job with called Four Strong Winds. The song, according to friends from Canada, is their unofficial national anthem because they can all relate to having to live their life and have fun when they can before the terrible winter starts.
Here are some lyrics from that song:
Think I’ll go out to Alberta
Weather’s good there in the fall
I got some friends that I could go working for
Still I wish you’d change your mind if I asked you one more time
But we’ve been through this a hundred times or more
Four strong winds that blow lonely
Seven seas that run high
All those things that don’t change
Come what may
If the good times are all gone
The I’m bound for moving on
I’ll look for you if I‘m ever back this way
If I get there before the snow flies and if things are looking good
You could meet me if I send you down the fare
But by then it would be winter
Not too much for you to do
And those winds sure can get cold way out there
The good times are all gone
So I’m bound for moving on
I’ll look for you if I’m ever back this way
So despite my pushing and screaming, i’ve had a cultural experience here in China. I respect and in some ways, envy, their Chinese New Year and how it’s a scarce period of rest like how Canada has a short window of good weather. Things in a lot of ways are too easy for those from warm, urban areas. We take too much for granted and as a result do little with the time or resources that we have.
For example, I’ll never know how it feels to spend a week with family after traveling 20 hours by train and working for the past 11 1/2 months a thousand miles from home. Or how summer feels after a hellish winter. China has hellish winters too, only adding to their misery+relief happiness when it’s all over with. Those lucky Hun Dans (this means bastards but I doubt its pluralized with an S like english is).
Here’s Neil Young and some of his friends singing about Canada:
Oh, about my Chinese New Year. My best friend is coming to visit and we’re going to fuck around in China for awhile then go to Boracay Beach in the Philippines.
I hope a couple of assholes like us from LA— tired, balding, 30 years old, unmarried, collared shirt depressed office monkeys– will be drinking a cold beer in 80 degree weather looking at this beautiful turquoise water.
It took us a long time to get here too.
