I’m an agorophobe. I admit it. If I could spend the rest of my days in my apartment - with visitors of course - without getting cabin fever, I would. But yesterday and today I braved the outside world and went down to Chinatown to visit the Flower Market as well as the Firecracker Ceremony for the Lunar New Year.

After six years of living in the New York area and having gone to college here, I never had any interest in attending any Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown. In fact, I avoided such things altogether, hating crowds and loud noise and waiting around. So I thought this would be a good experience for me, as well as something to Metblog about besides how much people annoy me, which is, let’s face it, the basic theme of nearly all of my postings.

Well, who knew it’d be the theme of this posting as well.

The Flower Market was pretty cool. There were some beautiful flowers, as seen here -

- as well as some cool bamboo:

As I mentioned in my earlier post, certain kinds of flowers are supposed to bring good luck and prosperity around the New Year, and all over Chinatown, and elsewhere as well, I saw people holding tall wrapped-up flowers. I didn’t get any myself, deeming it too much of a pain in the ass to carry them home. (I’m only superstitious when it’s convenient.)

It was very very very crowded, but at least I could keep moving, totally getting into my Chinese mode, ie, blithely pushing people out of the way. No animosity! Just, “Please move out of my way and here let me help you a little.” I did elicit a few dirty looks though from some laowai (ie, non-Chinese).

The Firecracker Ceremony was about a gazillion times more crowded. (Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures. For some reason whenever I try to take pictures outside, they come out all overexposed. Gotta look into that.) But I couldn’t keep moving. I had to stand there and wait. And wait and wait and wait. It was supposed to start at 12 but didn’t. At first I didn’t mind. People seemed to be having fun, oo’ing and ah’ing every time someone shot off one of those tubes that make a loud pow! and then spit out tendrils of streamers.

Then people started to annoy me. Yes, it was bound to happen. First, the old guy shouting into his cell phone. “YEAH, WE’RE BY THE VAN! DO YOU SEE US? WE’RE BY THE VAN!” So I moved. Then another schmo got on his cell phone: “DON’T DO IT, DAD! I’LL JUST DO IT MYSELF! DON’T WORRY ABOUT IT, DAD! I’LL DO IT TONIGHT! DON’T DO IT!”

Finally, a guy got on the mike and started saying stuff very enthusiastically in Chinese. I for one thought, Okay this is it! It’s gonna get started. Not so much. Afterwards, everyone and his brother made a speech, including, I think, the clean-up guy from the Golden Unicorn. Then finally -

Shnope. First the Lion Dancing Ceremony. With the crowd I couldn’t see shit, but there had been lion dancing up and down Mott and Baxter - which was pretty cool - so no biggie. Okay, now, yea! The firecrackers.

It was pretty neat. String after string of big red firecrackers snapping, crackling, and - well, popping. Very very loud. Loud noises - the firecrackers, the banging of cymbals and drums - are very important during the new year, in order to scare off those evil spirits, the way kids are supposed to wear red in order to fool the spirits into thinking that they’re already dead and bloody so that they’ll be left alone. (Happy new year!)

Now at least I can say I’ve been there, done that, and I do feel extra auspicious having been in the proximity of prosperity-bringing flowers and superloud firecrackers. Next year though some tasty dumplings will be enough.

Related posts:

1. My Year as a Dog
2. On Christmas — Hundreds of Jews with Nothing to Do
3. Stop Slurping
4. “What’s there to eat around there?”
5. chinatown loft