CNY Part 1: The masses convulge.

A figurative TON of information is to be added, here; this shouldn't be a surprise, either. The week or so has been abuzz with festivities all relating to the beginning of the New Lunar Year. And to welcome the Year of the Rabbit, our group decided to stay in town over our week-ish long break and see what the city had to offer. This details our Wednesday night, spent at the Hong Kong New Years Fest.

Basically, this part of the New Years is equitable to the bonanza and somewhat stale rush that occurs in the few days before Christmas: if you haven't gotten gifts yet for loved ones (or ones you're forced to love, maybe), you come to ridiculous street markets like this one to buy horrid trinkets and New Years-themed toys and gizmos at overpriced, but high demand value. Such things include, but are not limited to: blinking rabbit ears, pillows with strange sayings on them (one being the "Like" button on Facebook...), balloons, treat-like food that's available at any other market, ridiculous lights and toys, and some best of all, rabbit-themed clothes. Of any kind.

But the real insight to this part of the day, which was essentially the final day that local shopkeepers would do business before shutting their stores down for the next few days as everyone spends time with their family (and don't go outside, thus, the revenue wouldn't exceed variable costs for opening for the day, so it isn't efficient to stay open anyway -- the same thing happens with clubs around 2 am, apparently, so they push you out). With so many people all not doing anything in particular, they all congregate in this place.

So what's the significance? Oh, it's that close to every person on the Asian continent might have been crammed into this park in Kowloon. The theme of way too many people in way too small of a space will certainly become a motif to this week. Just see the photos, and realize that it was like this for the entirety of a downtown city park, and even spilling out of it by the time we left.

Just think about it. The park was beyond capacity. The park. Ridiculous.

With crowds upon crowds of people not being able to move freely to shops and go against the current of walkers, and all products pretty much looking the same... How would each of these stalls hope to reach out to all customers in the area?

Of course, by reaching for the stars. It's the Hong Kong way. Signs and displays were held on sticks over the mobs, allowing anyone to see what the thoughtful shopkeeps had in their particular designation amidst the hubbub. Even then, though, it's hard to fully concentrate on all of the sounds when tons of shopkeepers have items raised over you, other attendants with megaphones screaming things in Cantonese (which by this point, I have just tuned out, as it's not exactly the prettiest sounds a human can make), and the quadrillion conversations being echoed across by the populace, all fading into nothing as I can only focus on the one old lady trying to push herself through me by pressing against my back.

It makes me laugh.

The locals think it's weird when people like me laugh.

Really, who wouldn't laugh at things like this? Playboy puns abounded for this particular New Year. Good move by some... For others, it was a bit of a stretch.

After we pushed our ways out, and with time to spare, we first... breathed non-recycled air for the first time in a long while. Following this, we walked around the district, primarily residential, until we stumbled into a small park in between a huge complex of high rises, complete with a lighted, festive fountain.

At the park, we saw two young boys playing with some sort of slingshot toy, wherein you had a helicopter-esque piece of plastic, and shot it straight upward into the air, to watch it twirl down in a heap of light.

Our good friend Noah, always eager to try things, went over to the small boys and asked them if he could have a go. 

His first attempt? Hit his own wrist, and it crumpled to the ground. More determined not to be made a fool, he aimed extra far upward his second attempt, and sent the helicopter flying high into the air... only to land in the middle of the fountain.

The boy was shellshocked. He looked like he was trying to hold back disappointment when Noah started stammering his sorries, but really, it was just as much a look of confusion and disbelief at what that white kid had just done to his toy, and what this meant. Noah was beyond apologetic, and decided to reimburse him with HK$10 and one American dollar.

"What, if I was that age, I thought it would be cool to have foreign money!"

Yeah, Noah. Yeah.

As I sat there on the brick ground, laughter echoing between the cluster of facsimile high rises on all sides of us, it hit me that this was just another day. Another day for this kid (though maybe one he will always remember with scorn, fostering a sense of pseudo-racism at white people who take New Years toys) as he occupied one of those identical windows amidst the carbon copies of windows and carbon copies of buildings to the series of rooms he's always known and loved, with that same park to wake up to and play in the morning. 

Us? We're going back to our hostels for the night, checking off another day in our calendars and a pat on the back for a job well done in a foreign country, and one more night of sleep closer to being back to where we belong.

But that kid. He belongs at this place. Home is this place. Place among similar places, but other subtleties that allow him to differentiate his life from others. Many others. Perhaps too many for us Americans to conceive. Property in the sense of a yard and a picket fence? That's not a goal here. That's a pipe dream.

Relativity makes me laugh sometimes.