Happy New Year

It's like the set of '28 Days Later' here at school. Everyone's gone away. All the shops are shut. Worse still, all the local restaurants are shut. I didn't realise what was happening till the last minute so was lucky to get a couple of bits of chicken to keep me going over the weekend. Pretty fed up with it now but I still don't know when Spring Festival celebrations will finish or things get back to normal. At least the American fast food stalwarts are open if I make the trek into town. Colonel Sanders' chicken tastes a damn sight better than mine.

New Year's Eve was Saturday and it was pretty spectacular. I'm not sure if there was a public display in downtown Chengdu - there's actually a ban on fireworks inside the First Ring Road - but I chose to do what I think most Chinese do and stay in, watching the traditional TV spectacular, going outside only at midnight to soak up the atmosphere and sniff the gunpowder thick air.

The TV was fascinating. It was a bit like the Royal Variety Performance in the UK, a mish mash of song & dance with not a second's thought given to pushing any artistic envelopes. There's even a Chinese Lionel Blair who hosted it. Scary.

There were a few things, however, you'd not get on the Royal Variety show. There were three wonderful performances celebrating the army, navy and airforce complete with fantastically costumed dancers wearing combat fatigues, lots of gold braid or white flight helmets respectively. The background video, meanwhile, showed Chairman Mao and Deng Xiaoping, among others, shaking hands and smiling a lot.

Another set piece featured a woman celebrating the fact that it was her responsibility to do the housework. I can't see that playing too well back home.

Venturing down the road at midnight, you have to say the Chinese are good at fireworks. Big, big fireworks. I always remember them being stuck in milk bottles and being lit one by one when I was a kid. But here people buy huge crates of the things which look more like the rocket launchers you see on the back on trucks in war zones. Only war zones are probably a bit quieter.

Talking of which, school starts again on Wednesday. Fingers crossed for a happy new year.