Not only is the transport occupied, but all hotels are, too. If as a business (wo)man you come to ShenZhen during the New Year week and are looking for a hotel, you will find nothing, unless you have booked months in advance. But why should you? All the companies are anyway closed and all the business partners focussed on their families anywhere else in China.
Most companies close during the New Year week. In the weeks before (a few are late and catch up after New Year) a New Year dinner is held, roughly equivalent to our company Christmas dinners. However, with one big difference: Usually, people do not just eat and drink (or bowl), but there is a programme. A programme committee has prepared everything, the different departments of the companies have been appointed to tasks or voluntarily assumed some.
There are song and dance shows, cabaret, karaoke contests, riddle solving in exuberant mood. The highlight is always the lottery. The grand prize being valuable electronic toys or even a red envelope containing a few thousand RMB, the firms have got donations from suppliers and other business partners and bought from that money and some of their own budget more or less valuable gifts, everyone gets at least a little something. You go from table to table, toasting as long as you can walk or stand upright. Not very late in the evening, suddenly everything is coming to an end; once the program is over, some indefatigable fellows may go once more around toasting each other, but the tables all of a sudden fall empty, within ten minutes the entire room is deserted.
Because the economy is anyway for a week in standstill, many foreigners dwelling and working in China make it their habit to travel this week themselves, but not within China. That’s impossible. Thailand, Australia or Japan are the destinations of choice.
ShenZhen itself looks these days even more colourful than usual, because of the bright red flags and the lanterns that are suspended from all major roads at intervals of 50 to 100 metres, because of the New Year’s jewellery dangling from almost any door or gate or window, but also because of the countless tangerine trees framing the doors and gates of residential areas or shops, hotels or corporate lobbies (a tradition that is practised in southern China only).
The Chinese New Year is the second new moon after the winter solstice, approximately between 21 January and 21 February of our calendar. The oddest hustle takes place on New Year’s accessories markets. Especially on the day before New Year’s eve, and at New Year’s eve itself – so to speak, on 12-30 and 12-31 of the Chinese lunar year, the market is overcrowded, you are walked, you are pushed, and if you are not careful to leave your feet steadfast on the ground it may happen that you are carried for some metres!
New Year is not true without New Year odds and ends, quite analogous to our Christmas trees and accompanying Christmas decorations. Here, everything is bright red and not gold and silver like during our Christmas season; all the wise sayings and good wishes are printed or painted in black or gold on red background. The animal of the new year will be sold in all possible variations – the various years of the Chinese sexagenary cycle are symbolised by twelve different animals, such as tiger, mouse (or rat), rabbit, snake, pig, and others. The odds and ends are hung on doors, windows and walls, inside and out, and laid out on tables.
On each market you can have your own sayings written down on long narrow “wallpaper” (also most of the time red) in beautifully painted characters, either vertically or horizontally, on request.
In addition, there is everything else: snacks, sweets, fish for the aquarium at home, birds for the living room cages and flowers everywhere. The New Year markets are events full of colour, expectation, joy, they are life at its most colourful.
Transportation service people offer to bring home the purchased plants and other goods.
The girl helps the younger child (brother? Boy next door?) to ignite the blast.
Another girl is sketched in a marketplace. This older girl helps igniting, but keeps behind the
smaller girl, so, if the explosion is too severe it
will not be her who suffers the most harm....
During the New Year’s week, the roads at least as crowded as usual, but people are more relaxed. Now the families are strolling about, either grandma and grandpa have come to visit the young parents with the grandchild, or it is the parents who are working elsewhere but have come to visit their own parents in turn who are living in ShenZhen and raising the child.
