Grey's Journal:
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``The Chinese, they will take over all the world.'' Zornitsa informed me as we made plans to participate in the Chinese New Year celebrations on Sunday. As we approached the festivities, I anticipated hordes of Chinese. Trafalgar Square would be filled with them. The place would be packed, but at least it would be easy to see over the heads of the crowd. But this was not the case. There were more oriental faces than in an average London crowd, but it was still mostly Europeans. I was a bit disappointed. I hoped to be surrounded by the Chinese like when I traveled to Hong Kong. It is quite an experience to be in a crowd of people so alike. It makes me think of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The city was decorated brightly. Both Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square had posters and ribbons and paper lamps strewn across the buildings. Delicate paper flowers floated in Trafalgar Square's fountains. Zornitsa and I watched the opening celebration. It would have gotten underway quicker if not for the publicity hungry mayor of London, Ken Livingston. He held up the event by getting his photo taken with the dragons from every angle. The announcer desperately tried to fill the time. ``So, Ken Livingston, mayor of London, is opening the celebrations by painting the eyes on the dragons to wake them up and start the festival... we will begin in just a moment... Mr. Livingston has finished painting the eyes now... he wants a few photographs taken....... the dragons are now awake since the mayor has painted their eyes on... it is tradition to paint the eyes on last, so that the dragons don't start the festivities too early... as soon as the mayor finishes with those photographs, we can get underway.'' Eventually he satisfied himself and the dragons flew away and danced through the crowd. By lucky chance, I bumped into a guy dressed as the Chinese god of money. I don't know if this long-bearded god is an actual element of the Chinese cultural landscape or if he was something the bank of China (his sponsor) fabricated for publicity purposes, but I didn't care. The rules were that if I said `Happy New Year' to him in Chinese he would give me a mysterious red envelope. ``Kung hei fat choi!'' I said He handed me an envelope. Inside was a twenty pence coin. Finally, I had earned money in London. I couldn't wait to tell everyone. I turned to show Zornitsa the shiny heptagonal coin. ``You took it from the man?'' She asked. ``I didn't take it from him, it wasn't like I knocked him over and grabbed it out of his hand. He gave it to me. Well, actually,'' I paused proudly for effect ``I earned it.'' Zornitsa did not look impressed. We walked along and I stopped in front of a booth selling `the famous dragon's beard candy.' Based on little more than the size of the crowd, I decided to buy some. When I made my way to the front, I discovered why the crowd was so big. The team of three Chinese in the booth were handmaking the candy for each box. Two weary looking men took fist sized balls of a very hard taffy-like substance and pulled and stretched it in a bowl of powder until it became strands as soft as down. Then an old woman folded in a mixture of peanuts and placed the resulting cocoons into a box. I paid my three pounds and watched as they filled my box. I could feel the table as it quivered from the efforts of the mens' muscles and I commented to the salesgirl on the energy needed to make the candy. ``Oh, yes'' she agreed ``This work really hurts the mens' arms and hands.'' I felt guilty and realized that from the perspective of those men they weren't just selling candy. The crowd was paying them three pounds for two minutes of pain. But after my box was filled and I took my first bite, their woes were forgotten. The candy was wonderful stuff. Somehow sweet and peanut-buttery and tasteless all at once. I would have run back and gladly laid out six pounds for four more minutes of their pain if the line was not so long. We passed a display explaining the astrology of the different animal years. Zornitsa surprises me because she is a no-nonsense woman yet takes astrology very seriously. I read the description for my year just for the fun of it. I was born in the year of the Rooster. The description listed the vague and generally applicable good qualities for the entire human population born in 1981, but one line startled me with sudden specificness: Roosters invariably carry a notebook with them for writing reminders or noting down important facts lest they forget. Well, this I simply had to write in the small notebook I invariably carry around, lest I forgot. |
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Copyright © 2004 Wellington Grey  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. |
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