The Lantern Festival and... an Apple?

Today is the Lantern Festival - the fifteenth day after the start of Chinese New Year and, thus, the official end of New Year's celebrations.

It means that I was woken up by what sounded literally like fireworks in my backyard. I woke up with a heart attack. Who in the world would set fireworks at that hour in the morning?

Granted, it was noon when I woke up.

Once I managed to slow my heart rate down a bit, I figured that hey - maybe some of my foreign colleagues were fighting over the results of the Super Bowl. At least two of my American colleagues had woken up early to watch the big game. One's a Patriots fan. The other's a Giants fan.

I... should be an Eagles fan.

I don't really particularly care though. (Please don't kill me...)

I figured that they had started World War III over the results of the game. But, no. It's just the Lantern Festival.

Anyway, now I am in the coffee shop. I was just about to start the next chapter in my Chinese textbook when I got distracted by something... interesting. It's not particularly earth-shattering, no. But it's interesting nonetheless.

She walks into the coffee shop and goes straight up to the cashier.

He takes a seat at the table.

She stares at the menu for a moment, then turns around and sits down across from him.

"Do you want to order anything?" The cashier asks.

"In a moment."

Then he takes something out of a bag. I recognize it from afar. It's a plain white box with a small, gray apple insignia on the end. Someone's taken a bite out of it. I squint my eyes.

It's an iPad.

All right. She sits across from him. They open it together. And... well, they're both smiling like it's the most exciting thing that they've ever done - and it's that much better because they're opening it together.

...This sounds like an Apple commercial, huh? It's not. Not intentionally at least. It's just that not a lot of people in Baoding have iPads, let alone any other Apple product. For most people, I've been told, money is meant to be saved - not spent. So much so that I had a student come to me for advice on how he could convince his mother to let him treat her to dinner at a semi-nice restaurant.

So it's strange. They're sitting together now, trying to puzzle out how it works. I guess I could go over and help them with it... but they're having so much fun trying to figure it out, I really don't want to ruin their experience.

And... that's it.

Nothing big.

Just a moment.