I hurt in places I do not want to know. I’m cold and tin outside, with me rambling inside like an old nut. The rats of paper trash rustle around, down by the tracks where it smells like piss and smear, train debris lost in the pits. Leaves hunt through the street like rogue X-wings trying to dive-bomb the gutters, but next to the curbs, curious golden matchsticks have appeared.

February is a cunt of a month. I don’t rightly know why the Chinese insist on having their New Year in this time of year, but it’s probably on the off-chance that the really suicidal will manage to politely choke on the rice.

Mind you, I could stand celebrating it again, this year. Chinese spring festival is always full of food, drink and lethal community politics. For an outsider, it’s like being a child again. Just stuffing my face endeared me to many a Taiwanese granny, and to me it’s easy to compliment any food, especially if I get to make my own jiaozi.

Making jiaozi, or dumplings, is fun for everyone. You get handed a whole stack of thin rounds of dough, which you can fill with any filling people prepared and then try to close just so, so the innards won’t fall out when boiled. Be greedy and the dough will rupture, try to be smart and eat dough!

I like spring festival better than any of the Western festivals mainly because of the honest way people look at celebrating. They know food is the most important thing, followed by drinking and talking. Red isn’t the best colour for these things for any small reason; it’s a bright, busy colour that doesn’t leave you much time for thinking. Nor does the food move you to speaking anything but praise for said food, which is just the way people like it.

To bring up bad things like foreign national policies – let’s not forget abuse and torture in Tibet and intimidation towards Taiwan – is a faux pas. Just say it’s fucking delicious already, it’s not that hard. Or pretend to be drunk, you’ll get away with it then because drunk people lose next to no face – and the time when people lost their necks is far away to the expatriats I know.

Oh, and if you’re going to celebrate spring festival at someone’s place? Bring a present. Tea is like their fruit-cake, but bring anything edible, yummy and sweet and you’ll at least have made a good first impression.

Even now, I figure the right way to any community is through their kitchen. If that kitchen happens to be Chinese, remove your shoes, though, or the person who introduced you will lose face.