Tonight, Beijing sounds like it is at war. There is a constant crack of explosions and the whumpf of missles going into the air. The constant flashes of light and explosions in air make for an air of excitement. Millions of people are in the streets tonight making war. The war is agains the Xi. Tonight is Chu Xi-- Chinese New Year and we enter the year of the Dog.
The sound is deafening as the echos bounce off of building after building magnifying the sound as they reverberate through city canyons. Five or more seconds after a big boom the echoes rumble back to your ears.Car alarms go off with the biggest of the explosions. I walked from my apartment down to Chao Yang park, a distance of about a mile and a half, going through the other apartment complexes, watching the lighting and exploding of various fireworks. People laid out long (really long) strings of firecrackers and set them off providing something like five minutes of continuous noise. But one hears the same strings from other complexes at various distances. I have been told that this is the first year in a long time that the Chinese have been allowed to use fire crackers and use them they are. The streets are littered with the remains of burned out fireworks.
What is the purpose of this noisemaking? to drive off the Xi. As explained by my driver today, the Xi is an animal into which the Mogui enters. The animal then comes out of the forest to eat people. Only by making lots of noise can the Xi be driven off and the people saved. Tonight, the Chinese in Beijing should feel safe. It has been the constant roar of firecrackers (bien pao) for a couple of hours now. I have never heard such a roar of firecrackers.
Not understanding the term mo gui, (being a wei gui zi (a foreign devil) I knew the term gui zi . But mo gui was new and my driver couldn't explain it to me. The dictionary said it was the devil or a demon. So I told my driver that the Devil was 'zui gao de gui zi' (the highest devil). Xiao Zhou, a good friend who has taught me much Mandarin, said that the Xi was the zui gao de gui zi.
With this description, one is truly reminded of Peter's words in 1 Peter 5:8: "
"Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour"
One wonders how much difference there really is between our cultures.
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