Fireworks Mania in China

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Sunday, Feb 5, 2012 11:51PM / Standard Entry / China / Members only

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!

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