Letters from China No 2

22^nd June 2008

There’s a great amount of superstition and “hanging on” to the old traditions and beliefs in China. Like burning incense to the house god outside your front door on auspicious occasions. Also, burning paper representations of worldly goods like money, cars, TVs, mobile phones, etc which you believe your ancestors might need to get on with their afterlife. So it’s not unusual for us to arrive at floor 13 and our apartment to find the air full of smoke from either incense or burning paper sacrifices. It replaces the usual smell of burnt garlic, which the Chinese seem to like in abundance and is not an unwelcome change.

So far this year China has suffered several major disasters, the earthquake in Sichuan is the one most people will know of. But there were others including a massive freezing ice storm in the north and north-west which shut down roads and railways leaving people stranded around the country at the time when just about everyone is trying to reach home for their one and only holiday, the Spring Festival. In our city of Guangzhou there were over one million people sleeping in the street for a week outside the railway station. Numbers like that are unheard of in the west and the fact that nobody died was amazing to us all. Fortunately the weather was mild for February and the local government shepherded the people into the International Trade Exhibition Centre where, at least there was enough room for all those people to lie down and toilets etc. The Chinese army set up field kitchens to feed all of them. Eventually, they either got on a train for the days-long journey home, often sitting upright for more than 48 hours, or struggled back to their dormitories in the factories where they had worked all year waiting for this one moment to see their families again, albeit for a few days only. There have also been typhoons battering the coast not too far from us, sending millions inland for refuge. And not to forget several major train crashes which killed many more.

So 2008 has not been a particularly auspicious year for China and the coming Olympic Games in Beijing. So, much so that people have began to doubt the meaning of “lucky eight”. The number eight has always been considered lucky and the government, bowing to popular belief, has arranged that the opening ceremony of the Games will start at eight minutes past eight on the eigth day of the eigth month (August) in 2008. The reason for all this is that in Mandarin the word for 8, "ba," sounds like the word "fa," which means "fortune". That kind of superstitious thinking would have earned you stiff punishment not many years ago in China. The authorities have spent decades trying to root out "feudal thought." But it still runs deep in the popular mind, and Beijing apparently knows it.

People here believe natural disasters portend trouble for the country's rulers, which is an interesting thought. This dates back over 3,000 years, when the king who overthrew China's first recorded dynasty justified his rebellion on the grounds that the ruler he deposed had lost the "mandate of heaven" by ruling poorly. The belief is that “Good government preserved the harmony between man and nature”. So, if a ruler fell down on the job, there would be strains on the natural order reflected by catastrophes such as floods, droughts, and earthquakes" that augured his downfall”. This was the official ideology until the end of the 19th century. When a massive earthquake destroyed the city of Tangshan in 1976, killing at least 250,000 people, the popular imagination quickly linked the disaster to the death of Chairman Mao six weeks later.

Here are a few other examples of how the Chinese relate numbers, dates and symbolism –

It is customary to eat long noodles on your birthday, for example, because they signify long life.

Words that sound like one another, and dates, have an especially powerful attraction; September 18 is a popular day to open a business because the Chinese word for that date "jiu yi ba" (nine one eight) sounds like the phrase meaning "get rich quick."

August 8 has been regarded as a particularly auspicious date, both for its numbers and for the fact that the Olympic Games, a matter of intense pride to most Chinese, will open on that day. Beijing hospitals say they are expecting a spike in births that day, according to the state-run press, even if it means an even higher number than normal of C-section deliveries.

Parents of prospective "Olympic babies," however, laid their plans before doubts set in about just how lucky the number 8, or even the Games themselves, actually are.

Heretical numerologists have been all over the Chinese Internet in recent weeks, reading ominous significance into the string of misfortunes that have struck China in recent months.

The heaviest snowfall in 50 years that paralysed the south of China over the Lunar New Year holiday fell on January 25, ie 1/25. Add one to two to five, suggest the woe-mongers, and you get eight.

Same with the date that riots broke out in Tibet – 3/14, they point out. Same again with the date of the Sichuan earthquake – 5/12. To make matters worse, the earthquake struck 88 days before the opening day of the Olympics, which perhaps means double bad luck.

Then there's the "Curse of the Fuwas," those five cuddly Olympic mascots, each with a regional or mythical association, that some diviners of ill-fortune say represent a ghastly premonition.

One is a panda, native to Sichuan. Another is an antelope, native to Tibet. A third carries a torch, recalling the embarrassment of the protests that dogged the international torch relay. Another holds a kite, symbolic of China's kite-flying culture that was born in Shandong, in April the site of the country's deadliest train crash in decades.

What might the fifth, a fish, portend? The floods that have displaced more than 1.5 million people in southern China in recent days?

Back to College tomorrow and the last few days of testing. Monday night at around ten o’clock we will no doubt experience the massive setting off of fireworks, as will happen every night until exams are over. This scares away the demons, allowing our students to sleep peacefully. Never mind the fact that it keeps us awake through the night as some of the over-enthusiastic ones set off massive explosions throughout the night!

At least we’ll sleep well tonight in our apartment…..