Firework Storm

Yesterday was the last legal day for fireworks. For two weeks of the Spring Festival - or Chinese New Year, as we Westerners tend to call it - fireworks are allowed anywhere and everywhere. And they're cheap, too! So every evening since we arrived on Wednesday, we were treated to a distant rumble of pyrotechnics, which sometimes escalated to serious explosions.

But yesterday, the last day, was unexpectedly wild. The fireworks began before dusk, while we were straining to achieve the White Crane Spreads its Wings pose in Tai Ji class. Our master (he's a legit kung-fu master, and looks it) was telling us to listen to the birds and "fang song", relax, but it was kind of difficult with the sudden rash of explosions that punctuated his words. The cranes faltered in light of the fireworks; the evening had begun.

Our Chinese roommates took us out to tang yuar, which are the traditional rice dumplings with sweet innards that one eats on Lantern Festival day - for last night was the Lantern Festival, officially. You light a candle in the thin red paper lanterns, and send it, hot-air-balloon-style, to the heavens; it's a quiet, thoughtful enterprise. But we only saw two lanterns in the air last night!! All the rest was fireworks, fireworks, firecrackers, fireworks...

At one point, we were surrounded on five sides by amateur firework shows. They set them off from what looked like parking lots, shooting them up between buildings; piles of firecrackers were lit in the middle of the street, and taxis navigated around the still smoldering pieces of cardboard. The firework display that we watched seemed to be headed by this (crazy) old man:

Yes, that's a cardboard tube with fireworks coming out of it that he's holding. Seriously, that thing could be a weapon! It was pretty scary; but that's not all that he set off.

Yeah, he's running around firecrackers with a flaming tail.

Like Hook said, for most of the year, the Chinese follow the law, and I imagine there is a LOT of law to follow. But for these two weeks, craziness is allowed, is expected. A cop was standing right next to this dude, smoking a cigarette, and watching the fireworks from FAR TOO CLOSE, for me, at least. I kept running away! And a roommate's brother kept telling me that I was a scaredy cat, "bu yong hai pa, mei shir!"

There was a fireworks show right outside my window at 10:15pm, but I was so fireworked out I didn't even move to the window to look. I could see most of it from my bed, anyway.