Report out of Tianjin, the city by the sea, only 80 miles east and 20 years behind Beijing…residents are doing what they can to alleviate the bad luck of China’s annus horribilis by, what else, setting off firecrackers to blow away the bad luck.
In particular, there are fears that certain gods might be interested in harming the city’s youngsters. I’m not really sure where this belief comes from, but further information is certainly welcome. Nevertheless, the good folks of Tianjin are preparing for spiritual warfare the old fashioned way…by stockpiling explosives.
Practically speaking, if you’re doing some early shopping for July 4 fireworks in TJ, be prepared to find many stores currently sold out of boomers, screamers, and assorted things that go bang.
Oh yeah, and if peach cobbler was on the menu you may find yourself similarly out of luck as anxious parents have cleared store shelves of canned peaches (桃罐头). You see, 桃 (tao/’peach’) is a homophone for 逃 (tao/’escape’) and so children who eat peaches (tao) can escape (tao) the fate of being snatched by nefarious supernatural forces who seek to do them harm.
Gotta love living in China sometimes.
(Thanks to YJ’s mom for the tip.)
The firecrackers indeed are being set-off here to protect the children. And the canned peaches thing too. Both of these practices were common back in the time of SARS, as were several others, though my favorite was the buying of eggs. To ward off all things bad, you were supposed to buy six and/or eight eggs from six/eight different egg sellers, though the sixth egg must have been purchased from a seller named Liu, and the eighth from a seller named Ba. If I remember correctly, all of these things got going in response to the purported discovery of an abnormally large snake on a construction site somewhere near the Haihe, which unleashed the ‘she wang’ (the snake king) story, a portentous sign that bad things were about to happen. And so the firecrackers, canned peaches, and egg-buying remedies got some real tooth. In our neighborhood SARS was a loud time of firecrackers, which I am sure has the same folk roots as ‘Guo Nian,’ the passing of the year; make a lot of noise to keep it from landing.
Jim,
Thanks for checking in from TJ and giving us some background to the whole thing. I remember some firecrackers around SARS as well, but I was in Beijing where, at the time, fireworks were prohibited.
Cheers.
Yeah, it seems to be escalating instead of dying out. At first I thought it was some new tradition of celebrating Duan Wu Jie, which I thought was a little weird (zongzi aren’t enough- scare the fish away!), but I got the scoop from the mother in law. From what I understand, the fear is only for the young, virgin children, so the social pressure is on again- if you are a parent and not setting off firecrackers, your daughter must be catting around town. Just another ‘look at me!’ moment. Thanks for ruining my sleep.
I never really understood the firecrackers till I saw the film ‘and the spring comes’ a while back. Half of me laughs at it and the other half says ceremony can be all important.
[...] It’s been a bad year and as Jeremiah over at Jottings from the Granite Studio earlier this week noted: Report out of Tianjin, the city by the sea, only 80 miles east and 20 years behind [...]