It's Saturday night in the village of Fortunate Cloud in the township of Cinammon Ocean. It's not just any Saturday night, this Saturday night is the seventh day of the lunar new year. Depending on the way their work units are structured most people in the cities will return to work on Sunday. The Spring Festival holiday period is officially only one week long and they will have to resume the daily grind.

         However, out in the countryside the beginning of a new year is something that goes on and on and on and on and on and on. Weeks of preparation followed by weeks of ritual, ceremony, visiting, and parties. Especially parties. Down here, at the far south end of China, the planting season never ends. There is always a crop going in. They don't have the winter doldrums the way northerners do but the lack of a still time doesn't stop them from throwing one heck of a big party.

         The cars begin to arrive at one of the houses. And arrive. And arrive. And keep arriving. This household's eldest son has invited some of his friends to his home. His home is a distinctly different place from the place where he lives and works. Although this building couldn't possibly be the place where he was born (it's too new for that) it's very likely built on the site of the place where he was born and the graves of his ancestors are somewhere nearby.

         By the time all the cars are there the approach to this house looks more like a parking lot than a road. Enough of a path has barely been left for pedestrians, and more importantly for the bikes. Which, as the gloomy afternoon fades into evening will start arriving one after another after another after another after another. More than fifty bikes will eventually end up in the courtyard under the blooming orange trees.

         This household's eldest son is generally acknowledged as the best rider in the local bike club. Being the best is a matter of social status as well as skill. One could enter a race he's in and win and still not be a better biker. Not that winning a race against him is particularly easy. It can be done. It has been done. But it isn't easy. And the kid who did it still isn't the best, he's just someone who won a race (and earned bragging rights).

         Some of the people on bikes rode out from the nearby city. Some of them, including myself, just finished the fifth and final day of an 800 kilometer ride around the island. From Haikou to Bai Sha, Bai Sha to Le Dong, Le Dong to Tianya, Tianya to Qionghai, and Qionghai to Haikou. When it was announced that Hai Ge was inviting us to his home for dinner I knew it was going to be a big party, but I had no idea how big a big party can get when it's big. And I had no idea what to expect. Especially not when the route to his home involved mountain biking.

         The local club sees no reason why riding 700cc tires should stop one from mountain biking. It's so much more convenient to take the shortcuts on dirt roads than to stick with the roads on the maps. Prettier too. And if the road of sorts is too bad for skinny tires then anyone riding skinny tires ought to have a light enough bike to be able to carry it. Since these trails are also used by more conventional forms of transportation such as water buffalo and motorcycles there aren't many places where a road bike can not go, just lots of places where a road bike should not go.

         It's no real surprise that the house was nice. If Hai Ge can drive a luxury car and afford to own a dozen bicycles, many of which cost more than $1000 in a country where there are people happy to make $1000 a year his home will of course be a nice one. Three stories at least, maybe four. I didn't get a real good look at the outside. It was growing dark.

         There was a front garden where every plant was obviously nothing but decorative. The tops of the courtyard walls were studded with broken crockery instead of recycled shards of broken glass. In terms of security glass from beer bottles would probably be better but for real security there was almost certainly a burglar alarm. Broken sharp things on top of tall walls are just the way things are done.

         Compared to most Chinese banquets I've been to the food was fairly unimaginative. Which is to say, safe and tasty. There wouldn't have been room for tables enough for everyone to sit down and eat in traditional fashion. I'm glad for this. Traditional banquet fashion frequently involves delicacies and delicacies are normally strange as well as being oddly flavorless. Instead there were huge quantities of fatty roast duck, equally huge quantities of chicken, soup, corn, leafy greens along with long grain rice and dozens of bottles of beer served in a chaotic buffet style.

         Like any Chinese family during the holidays we crowded around the television while we ate. Watching tv together is something that Chinese families like to do during the holidays. They make a specific point of watching tv together. Usually specially produced song and dance shows instead of the television they might otherwise want to watch on their own. Things like the national ping-pong team singing karaoke. Instead we got to see video shot of the round the island ride. Unedited, uncut. Including such fascinating bits as the photographer's feet when he forgot to turn the camera off. While we watched tv someone tried to set up the projection screen so everyone could see better.

         Once the projection screen was set up but before we could watch on the wall there was a brief ceremony thanking everyone for coming, thanking our host, thanking our host's family, with an especial note of thanks for the ancient woman in a wheelchair, thanking our mechanics, thanking our support vehicles, thanking the people who had come in from particularly far away, and talking about what 36 of us had just done followed by certificates for those of us who came on the ride.

         While the certificating was going on the family pretty much ignored us and worked on getting the big incense burners set up on the altar at the front door. And then, just as the video was going to be set up again, the musicians came in...

         ...Led by a silver toothed man wearing clothes that could have been five years old, fifty years old, or five hundred years old, playing instruments that could have been made last month or last century, followed by a procession of small children banging gongs, and finally teenagers with miniature red painted sedan chairs and the local gods. They were put on the family altar and in groups of twos and threes the family came and kowtowed and gave their thanks for a good year.

         I was caught between feeling awestruck by it all and feeling guilty for peeping in on what felt to me like something that obviously was a private sort of affair (though the presence of a hundred other invited outsiders crowded around the edge with me helped make me feel less like a gawky blond gate crasher). Mostly I settled for awestruck and crowd watching. The musicians, some of them with Mao jackets, the children cramming sweets into their mouths, the people surreptiously (and not so surreptiously) playing with their cell phones, the old man in embroidered robes, our photographer taking pictures, and still the incense burned, the music played, and the family kept coming to kowtow. One child policy is a new thing and extended families are big families.

         Expressions ranged from the devoted to the bored and didn't seem to have anything to do with other outward signs of city sophistication or age. Some of the twenty something moderne girls with their three inch heels and carefully coiffed, curled and bleached hair were obviously devout while there were older ones who looked as if they hoped this whole dull religion thing would please be over and done with soon.

         Finally, they set off enough fireworks to leave ankle deep drifts of red paper at the gate.

         It was after 9 o'clock by the time it was all over and done with and instead of watching the video we figured out who was riding home on a bike and who was riding home in a car (and in which car). Because of the rain the bikes decided to take the ultimate shortcut back to Haikou, on the expressway, shadowed and guarded by lines of cars with blinking tail-lights to augment their own rear blinkies. At the bike shop I got my luggage, switched cars, and went home myself.

         Or, if not exactly home, to the place where I live.

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