Beijing entered the Year of the Rabbit with its normal explosive enthusiasm for Chinese New Year. Our very wealthy neighbour – or, at least, his very wealthy family, the very wealthy neighbour himself being in jail – let off fireworks rivalling the entire firepower of a world war just feet from our house. Today our garden, complete with trampoline and rabbit run, are covered in firework detritus. You'd think that rabbits – so many of whom fall prey to the shotgun – would be genetically programmed to drop dead with fear at the very sound of a firework. Not so ours, who took refuge in their burrow network. They are brave and bold, and emerged to face the world coolly today. We have lived in Beijing for ten years in this incarnation, and Chinese New Year is infectious, but the festival has not entered our souls. Nevertheless, we are a rabbit family, and so we are celebrating bigtime this year:
(As you can see, our rabbits are kept snug in their hutch with the aid of military quilts). We should have set off a whole warehouse of fireworks ourselves. As we understand it, the fireworks set off by our neighbours have terrified all the evil spirits away from their properties, and they will have taken up residence in ours, because we are the only ones not to adequately defend ourselves with dynamite….. All we managed was a few pathetic sparklers, and a box of fireworks set off in civilised fashion down by the river, far away from neighbours' gardens. We even cleared up ourselves, dousing our firework remnants in water and putting them neatly in a bin. I would love to know what is in the mind of the cleaners who are paid a pittance and who should be with their families at Spring Festival but who instead spend day after day sweeping up the wrappers and the ash discarded by those who can afford to light a touch paper to the fireworks that cost months of a cleaner's wage.