Well, Happy New Year from Chen Jia Gou! This coming year is the Year of the Dragon,
which I can’t help but feel is a fortuitous year to be here. I haven’t looked at the Chinese symbolism
surrounding Dragons yet, but seeing as to how my new power animal is a Dragon,
I can’t help but feel that there is some meaning there!
The New Year celebrations seem to
have lasted forever. They were precluded
by days, if not weeks, of random firework and firecracker explosions which all
reached fever pitch on the 22nd, New Year’s Eve. I didn’t really know what to expect or what
was going to happen, nothing new there!
Grandmaster Chen has adopted the same strategy I use when talking to
people who don’t understand English: Say
it in Chinese and smile a lot. So I
might pick up the basic gist that something is going to happen at 10.30, and
that we are going somewhere, but I will have no idea where or why.
The week preceding New Year was one full of activity. While I practiced basic exercises and Nei
Gung, the Chen family were coming and going on endless excursions, returning
with boxes, packages and things wrapped in red.
I watched, slightly alarmed, as Grandmaster Chen extracted halves of a
pig’s head from a steaming cauldron and told me that yes, he did eat them. By extension, therefore, so would I! A bowl of chickens - heads, feet and all -
sat on the kitchen table. On New Year’s Eve
itself, Tin Tin and a mate came over and helped decorate the school with
various red banners and pictures of cute dragons. There were endless trips to and from the
kitchen which aroused my curiosity. So
as you can imagine, I was full of anticipation, and apprehension regarding the
pig’s head, about New Year’s Eve dinner.
But 5.30 came, I was told to come for dinner, and it turned out to be a
simple bowl of dumplings which, while delicious, were not quite what I was
expecting! One reel of firecrackers and
that was it, I was back in my room and watching a movie, feeling rather hard
done by. I went to bed at about half ten
thinking ‘it’s not my New Year anyway!’ and wondering what all the fuss was
about. *
At midnight I was woken up by fireworks exploding everywhere. I stayed where I was. More fireworks followed at some ungodly hour
in the morning, then more just after seven, at which point I pulled the duvet
over my head and decided to have a lie-in.
Not for long. Before eight there
was a knock on my door telling me to ‘chi fan!’ (eat!) and I had to get
up. New Year’s Day morning was
fascinating. I had a coffee from my
emergency stash of Lavazza, then joined the Chen family as they went around the
village visiting relatives. Everyone had
new clothes for the New Year. I had on
clean (and red!) thermals which I felt came pretty close. We went to Grandmaster Chen’s mother’s house,
and the house of an 100 year old lady.
Both of these ladies live in traditional houses, small brick dwellings
built around a courtyard.
Then it was time to visit the temple which is in the tai chi
museum. There were a lot of people there
and lots more fireworks. In the main
square of the museum is a statue of Chen Wang Ting, the founder of Chen Tai Chi. In front of him was a table covered with
offerings and incense. A man was
shouting into a megaphone. A pile of
shiny gold and silver paper was set on fire.
More fireworks exploded and set off coloured smoke. Everyone cheered and bowed down to Chen Wang
Ting. Which made me think. Here is a small village in China,
unremarkable except for the fact that this amazing martial art and path to spiritual
enlightenment comes from here and has been passed down through the generations
for almost four hundred years. And I’m
here, right in the middle of it! I
seemed to be the only foreigner about so posed for a few photos, then it was
back for a New Year’s Day lunch. The
pig’s head had been cunningly disguised into slices of meat, and it was even
nice!
The next day we visited more relatives; Sha Wei’s wife’s
family who live in the next village. It
was here that I realised how poor this area is.
The people have no heating, and it’s cold. The floors are bare concrete. The houses are small and very, very basic. And yet these little houses were full of
food, warmth, laughter and hospitality.
Obviously this is the biggest celebration in the Chinese year, but I
really don’t know that I’ve ever been made to feel more welcome anywhere I’ve
been in Asia. Because I can’t speak much
Chinese, and the people here speak a regional dialect that I don’t understand
at all, I just keep being told to eat.
So I do, it makes everyone happy!
I think that my overriding feeling is one of extreme
gratitude. My room in the school isn’t
much compared to where I lived in England, but I have heating and running hot
water. I also feel incredibly lucky to
have been invited to all these family occasions and to have been able to
witness such a unique slice of Chinese culture.
I got the feeling that this particular area hasn’t really changed that
much, and that if you took away the mobile phones, fluorescent coats and snazzy
haircuts, it would be much as it has been for centuries.
