Its been a long time since I moved from the US to Asia.  The first two years were spent in Japan, a country that enjoys a lot of summer fireworks festivals throughout the country.  Hong Kong also holds official government run fireworks events every Chinese New Year,  western New Years Eve, on Chinese National Day (Oct 1) and on 'Handover Day' (July 1) too I think. 

But nothing could prepare me for what I have encountered here in Beijing this week after the Chinese New Year holiday...... 

Around town you can see a lot of these types of temporary kiosks for the last few weeks -



Somehow I immediately recognized it as being similar to those temporary wooden shelters on the side of the highway in rural parts of the US leading up to 4th of July.... yes thats right,  its called - DIY Fireworks!


I don't know what all of these things are,  but I'm sure they must be fun to shoot off...


In dangerously underregulated China,  these places must set a record for safety warnings...  (not that anyone necessarily listens...)  but notice the CCTV Headquarters building on the poster on the right.  missing from that photo is the Mandarin Oriental hotel complex which burnt down in 2009 after a fire started by illegal fireworks! (oh the irony). 

Ever since I got back to Beijing last week there has been a near continuous barrage of fireworks going off around our neighborhood.   Sometimes its firecrackers, sometimes its bottle rockets... 
Well today is 15th day of the Lunar New Year, which is called the Lantern Festival Day (元宵節). 

Apparently if you have any fireworks left,  you're supposed to set them off today.  So today (during the day time too, not just at night)  the cacophony is quite deafening.  It doesn't seem sound like a war anymore,  just a continuous rumble... 

The break in the background noises comes when someone decides to give you a front row seat for their pyrotechnics display.  Tonight some guys decided to stop outside my window and unload about 6 or 7 boxes worth of fireworks... and light them all off in sequence:


The pic above doesn't do it justice,  so instead check out the video below.  It shows an approximately 40 foot chain of fireworks that they lit off.

Video: http://youtu.be/O1gDPa2hEMA

Note the cars trying to drive by without getting set on fire...

They did about 3 of these plus some bottle rockets which shot up to about 20 stories high before exploding in a shower of sparks (which hit my building).   They finished it off with a big box full of sparklers which they left burning in the middle of the street when they got back into their cars and drove off (cause lighting the fireworks in front of their own house would be rude to their neighbors?)

Anyway, looking forward to this lesson in Chinese new year tradition to be over!

I am currently suffering from a mild fever so I spent the entire weekend at home... needless to say I caught up on a lot of film watching...  One of them was Mira Nair's 2009 film "Amelia",  a bio pic about Amelia Earhart starring Hillary Swank, Richard Gere and Ewan McGregor.

After having such a horrible horrible time watching Takeshi Kitano's 'Glory to the Filmmaker!' a few weeks earlier,  I was almost afraid to get the DVD for his newer movie, 2010's 'Outrage', which marks his return to the straight up gangster genre.


I'm glad I took a chance on this film.  I quite liked it.   Like many of his movies, Kitano directs and plays one of the lead characters in this ensemble piece. 

The plot focuses on the inner struggles within a yakuza organization as rival bosses cross and double cross each other out of greed, ambition and revenge.  Definitely not for the faint of heart, but I would say you could look at this as a Japanese equivalent of  'The Godfather'…..  …well maybe not quite so epic…. maybe more like 'Goodfellas' or 'The Departed'.       It reminds me of a Scorsese film in that its actually educational as well as entertaining,  providing a lot of insight into how the Yakuza operates in Japan. (I'll have to keep my eye open for guys in black cars wearing tacky suits…)
As you can imagine,  in the rough and tumble world of Yakuza gang wars,  a lot of the violence is quite graphic… but just shooting or stabbing your victims wouldn't send a strong enough message, so in this film people get rubbed out in a variety of horrifying ways…  

I read on wikipedia that Kitano came up with the list of  horrific ways to kill someone and then came up with a story with scenes to fit them all in….   I wonder how that writers meeting went down…. "ok, ok,  let's try killing someone with a dental drill…..  ok now, how do we figure out how to get this into our plot?"

I had to look away during many of the graphic scenes, but overall I found the film quite good.  A strong 8/10 from me on this one.  Check it out if you're into gangster flicks!

Wanchai edition!

It's 20 degrees C in HK today.... I'm on my way to the airport right now. the temp in Beijing right now is -6 C.  oh joy! :-P



Can't wait for winter to be done!