My Chinese New Year’s Eve was lonely. Upon checking in at the hotel the day before, I was (somehow, the staff did not speak English) notified that no breakfast would be served, for my entire stay, due to the encumbing Holiday. Later on, 2 liter size (one quart 3 ounces) waterproofed cardborard drums of liofilized noodles soup were delivered to my room, it was the first time in my life I considered eating such. And it wasn’t bad, after I added the boiling water from the in room electric kettle, I had a total of 6 in 4 days.

On the internet, I had looked at flights to somewhere warm, reformulating my entire plan: it seemed I could get a reasonably priced flight to Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) and then from there I could do the reverse of the itinerary I had planned: take a train to Southern Thailand, go to the little frequented Islands near the border, in the Andman Sea and then onward to Bangkok, Cambodia, then Vietnam. I tried communicating with a travel agent whose office was in my hotel. Naturally it was impossible to engineer departure on the afternoon New Year’s Eve, in spite of the very helpful disposition and communicative skills of the agent, who did not speak English, but understood my quandary and started making calls right away. After trying the bus station (in vain) for a ticket to Vietnam the following day, I had a gala dinner by myself, in a luxury restaurant specializing in Macau Cuisine. I ordered only two plates, but the food kept coming: “On the house” they kept signaling, they must have felt sorry for me being in a private room (that’’s all they had) prepared and decorated with all trimmings of a banquet for 10, while being all alone. And the waitresses kept knocking on the door before entering, every 3-4 minutes. They insisted on applying the same courtesy of knocking even to my desolate room, as they did with the abutting banquet rooms, which sounded boisterous and festive. By 8.20, when I left the restaurant, all customers had gone, probably to blow up firecrackers and fireworks, judging from the ensuing citywide pandemonium. The restaurant staff ran after me to give me back the tip I left on top of my $ 4 tab, refusing to take it when I insisted. I dined alone on the most important Chinese holiday, in spite of my naturally convivial dispostion; I am not surprised nobody invited a deaf and mute stranger around their table, I hadn’t met anybody in Guilin anyway, in fact I am grateful to the Macau restaurant, for their kindness and for being next door to the hotel I was staying in.

The explosions of New Year’s “war” had started around noon of the eve and went on in a continuos crescendo to the wee hours of the night; around midnight, the air in my room was smoky and it wasn’t possible to see anything outside the windows, other than thick clouds of acrid smoke seeping in, occasionally punctuated by flickering lights. The noise was deafening all along, but I was navigating away, virtually, on the in-room wi-fi connection; I knew that sleeping would be impossible. There was a brief truce, possibly between 3 and 6, although skermishes were carrying on sporadically. Then things started again till past noon New Year’s Day.

But the official display, which was on the night following (and I would have missed it, had I been able to leave as planned), was spectacular: it went on for 45 minutes and had fenomenal formations and assortments of graphic explosions that I had never seen, including a high up waterfall with sparkle that would hover in the air over 10 seconds. And the grand finale kept not coming: in stead of the paroxysm common in the US, there was a level of sustained excitement, a conitnuum that seemed a continuous grand finale, until a quiet, champagne waterfall of sparkle was followed by vividly colored beamed lights clearly signaling the end. Difference in culture, one portraying the male orgasm, the other the female, more or less consciously? Naturally I was without charged batteries and just as well, I would not have been able to do the display justice, due my limited 6^th floor view, and luckily my windows were facing a side where I could see it. Perhaps my camera’s shortcomings conditioned me into thinking it is impossible to photograph fireworks properly, but it would have been nice to make a video. Though setting is everything: if one doesn’t have a point of view with recognizable landmarks and proper framing, it is impossible to give a sense of scale, and even then it is hard. Not to mention the colors, the tendency of light to streak… And in retrospect I remember several frustrating 4^th of July experiences. Not in detail, just the notion of their existence; all these reflections make me feel less sense of loss for not having been able to immortalize the spectacle and glad to have witnessed it.