The Lantern Festival

For the winter break, I decided to stay on campus instead of returning home to loving family (and hongbao, Chinese red envelopes filled with money) back in Indonesia. Safe to say, the place was pretty deserted. Despite that, I’d like to share an amazing experience I had on the 24th of February, also known as the Lantern Festival. After a week of barricading myself within the confines of my depressing room, I willed myself to do something productive before the winter break ended. Thus my impulsive decision to travel to Hangzhou with my snake plushie named Snek. Snek and I traversed the metro lines, our adventures filled with ups (I didn’t get too lost, woohoo) and downs (the wind and rain decided to launch an unexpected attack which my umbrella unfortunately lost the battle). I originally planned to go to Yintai which is a popular mall near Xihu, the Westlake. However, as I have a passion for clownery, I accidentally input a route that instead led us to the Zijinggan campus.

Disheartened, me and Snek nearly went home. But then my mother proposed an idea via WeChat. She told me about a park called Xixi National Wetland Park where a hundred-meter lantern dragon was set up for the festival. So, at around 16:00, me and Snek boldly made our way to the metro. I was blissfully unaware that the park was to stop ticket sales at 16:30 and halt entry at 17:00. Guess who found out after exiting the station at 17:27? Yikes. After having a brief walk around the surrounding entrance of the park in the light rain with my half-deceased umbrella, I decided to approach the policewoman who was stationed right in front of the closed ticket booth. She was delightful and very friendly, trying her best to convey to me why I couldn’t step inside. We had a bit of a struggle communicating due to my limited Chinese vocabulary but our talk did attract some other confused and disappointed tourists.

This is when things got interesting. There was a man and a woman who listened along to the policewoman’s explanation. She mentioned a back door of the park it's where the dragon lantern is and where people were celebrating the festival. The man and the woman offered me a ride there which was kind yet sketchy since stranger danger. They both spoke beginner-level English so we tried our best to communicate via broken English, broken Chinese, as well as translation apps.  But with a brain deprived of human interaction and a lack of survival instincts, I followed them all the way to their car. Around 20 minutes passed and we made it to our destination. The woman, whom I will be referring to as Ms Song, and the man, Mr Zhang, accompanied me around the festival. We saw the amazing 100-meter dragon lantern together, a large lantern that had all 12 zodiac animals perched on different sides, and a lot of people. There were also lanterns hanging around with some Chinese phrases on them, Ms Song told me that they were fun riddles people try to solve.

After a while, they brought me to a really good restaurant (which I forgot the name of, whoops-) with authentic and delicious food. They explained facts about each dish that was ordered and boy, they were generous. They ordered Nanjing Kao ya (Nanjing Roast duck), Mei Ling congee which was nicknamed after China’s former first lady and was rumored to be her secret for staying young and beautiful, and golden guotie which are delicious dumplings filled with ground meat and vegetables. They were shaped like Chinese good luck coins that were meant to symbolize wealth, duck blood soup, tang yuan which are sweet rice balls with a black sesame filling, a staple dish people eat to increase prosperity and luck for the year.

We enjoyed the delicious food and exchanged stories together for hours until it was time for me to head back. Mr Zhang refused to let me pay, stating that I was like a guest to them. I thanked him and Ms Song for their generosity, their help, and so forth before stepping on my train. It was an amazing experience that could've gone south (don't do what I did, please. It was dumb and I got very very lucky).

It was a wonderful experience that I will never forget. Not going to lie, it did wonders to my mental health. I didn't spend one of my last days on holiday cooped up in my room alone and eating instant noodles, I spent it with new friends and good food.