Tomorrow (Wednesday) is Chinese New Year's Eve, which means that things have been busy around here. People have been traveling by the millions (an estimated 50 million a day on buses for the past two days, to go up to 60 million tomorrow), when they aren't getting stuck in places like the Guangzhou train station. On a serious note, all of the uncharacteristic snow over the last couple of weeks caused a lot of problems, which seem to be well on their way to being solved now, but not without casualty. An estimated half a million people (yep, 500,000 -- equivalent to a medium-sized American city) have been stuck at the Guangzhou train station over the past week, and although the army seems to have done their best (and most helpful) to keep the situation controlled, things were bound to get out of hand when people were finally allowed to board a train; it's been reported that one person died in the resulting stampede. Frankly, I'm surprised it wasn't worse. In addition to that, there have been deaths due to car and bus accidents on frozen highways, electricity blackouts resulting from coal not getting through to certain regions, and worries about food shortages because of farmers not being able to get to markets. Anyway, I figure that might not be making headlines over there, so I thought I'd mention it. Life in Shanghai hasn't been markedly different, but large parts of the country have been deeply affected.

Here in Shanghai, though, it's the countdown to the Year of the Rat. Unofficially, Spring Festival, as it's otherwise known, started sometime in the past month, and won't end for a couple weeks after New Year's Day. A few of the smaller stalls have started shutting down over the past few days, and I expect everything to be closed on Thursday. Officially, the holiday lasts for 7 days, so things will probably be fairly quiet for a while. Of course, I myself am heading out of town for a bit, so I won't really know.

In the meantime, though, some people have been celebrating the "little new year" -- the week before the real new year ("big new year"), and as should be expected, the celebrations are getting bigger as the days count down. I've been hearing the odd bang now and then for over a week, but the ruckus has started in earnest now. Firecrackers are readily available (apparently they were banned until 2006), as, evidently, are actual fireworks. I've now seen at least 3 fireworks displays in the few blocks around my building -- the one pictured here was just barely peeking around another building in my complex -- and have heard (but couldn't see) others. And I live in a relatively quiet part of town! Between the blasts and the rat-a-tat of the firecrackers, New Year's Eve downtown supposedly sounds like a war zone (but with fewer injuries, and a much lighter atmosphere). Check out this guy's video and account of the 2006 celebrations if you're interested.