Chinese New Year - explosions in the night

So, my friends Joel and Jordan came to visit for about three weeks and the madness has ceased. I'm finally getting back into the swing of things. Joel is on a boat to Tokyo and should be arriving in another day. He'll be back in Beijing at some point before heading back to Seattle. Jordan is in Boston, hopefully.

Along with LuHan and two of her friends we traveled quite a bit, mostly in Southern China (Yunan Province). I'm going to write a bit about these travels in the coming days, but first I wanted to rewind to the beginning, Chinese New Year.

Although I will attempt, I can't begin to describe how absolutely insane this experience was. Joel, Jordan and I all said to each other at one point that this was easily one of the most spectacular things we have ever witnessed. Now, I'd have to say that the three of us are not easy to amuse.

The history of setting off fireworks on this holiday is quite simple. It's to scare off the evil spirits. It makes sense right? No one wants those evil spirits lingering around in the night. For about 7 or 8 years fireworks were banned inside the city center in Beijing. Last year was the first time in a while they were allowed to go at it again. Keep in mind that this is taking place everywhere in the entire country at the same time.

Growing up in suburban/semi country America we came to know fireworks quite well around the 4th of July, in fact I used to try and make them myself. Fireworks in our world existed in three ways. One, the legal fireworks like sparklers, snakes and other relatively harmless displays. Two, going to see a professional show at the local fire hall or in the city. Three, having someone drive to the southern states to get illegal fireworks. These included things like roman candles, black cats, m-80s, and rockets. Obviously, choice three was the best. And even with these semi dangerous fireworks we had a ton of fun. We all had a sense of underlying safety that we followed most of the time. We would go out to a huge field, keep away from houses, and warn people when there was a fire in the hole. So, for us three yanks this was our perception of fireworks coming into this.

The night before Chinese New Year we were out at this Japanese whiskey bar that I fancy when a couple of Chinese guys blazed in handing out what looked to us like sticks of dynamite. I couldn't believe the size of these things. Then, they encouraged us to come with them to fire them off on the street. We are in the middle of a gigantic international city and blowing off an explosive just seems ludicrous. Well, when in Rome...This brief session of lighting these things off really gave us an insight as to what the coming evening and week for that matter would be like. As we set these "double boomers" off on the street we could not believe that one could purchase these things on the corner and not have a license to activate them. These were easily equivalent to a quarter if not a half stick of dynamite. They literally shock the ground in front of you and caused an immediate sense of panic as the explosion echoed between the buildings. These particular ones would stand up straight, explode, then shoot another ball into the air with an equal explosion. At one point one of them fell over and we had to run to take cover not knowing where the hell it was going to shoot. It blew up near some girl that probably had to change her underwear shortly after. After this night we had a glimpse of what we'd be in for, but not really.

Let me just break it down for you. During this time period anyone can buy various explosives like I mentioned above, even ones far more powerful and set them off ANYWHERE they want. This is all in good fun, of course. You can put them on the sidewalk, in the street, beside a car, in front of your building, or in the path of a crowd of people. I must say that in no way was there direct intention to harm others or even destroy property, just pure negligence and chaos. The various types of fireworks are equivalent to the size of what you would see being let loose at a professional fireworks display in a small town in America.

The next night, the 17.4 million people of Beijing blew the shit out of their city. From dusk till dawn it was like being trapped in a war zone. I've never been in a war, but this is what I imagine it sounding like. When you stood at any point and spun completely around the sky was lit up with colors and your ears were pounded with massive explosions. Your body shook and you felt alert looking around for a fire in the hole. There were no warnings. It was incredibly ridiculous and dangerous, but we loved every minute of it as we drank beer and roamed around our neighborhood. The peak of the event was of course around midnight and for a solid hour we couldn't even talk to each other without screaming.

For the climax we went out in front of our building near one of the main streets and just stood there in complete amazement as people spent fortunes on gunpowder and sent it all up in flames. While the three of us were standing there occasionally jumping and ducking I think it was Jordan who said to turn around and look at the building beside us because one of the hotel rooms was spitting out flames. And yes, sure enough the room was on fire. We called the police, although they probably already knew as a crowd of hundreds watched from across the street. The building didn't go up, and it was eventually put out (the pictures to the right document a different fire, read on). The night continued and finally when we turned in. It was nearly impossible to sleep with the remaining explosions randomly shaking our apartment. If the evil spirits survived this night, they must be pretty strong.

When we returned to Beijing a week later after traveling we learned that there would be another night of fireworks for the end of the festival, as according to the Lunar calendar. Once again the city would be up in smoke. We all had dinner at LuHan's parents and her mom bought some fireworks for us to set off. Of course, they were amazing and soon that feeling of "I can't believe people are doing this" returned.

We left her parents by taxi and headed out to meet some friends at another bar when we got stuck in traffic on a bridge. As we moved slowly, Joel, this time said that there was a building on fire ahead of us. You could only see the flames in the reflection of another building because it was only burning on one side, so it was a little hard to tell how serious it was. About one minute later when we got closer we could see that this was a serious fire about to engulf a 70 story building. At this point we were right beside it and the thick, bright orange fire was mainly at the base, but climbing steadily. The smoke came off in thick black clouds which made it impossible to see above. We had the windows down in the taxi and panicked a bit when we heard what I think were the windows of the building exploding. That sound was surreal and all I could think about was the twin towers for some reason. This was no longer interesting, but serious and awful. We were only about 200 yards away from the building now and traffic was moving slowly. At one point we could feel the heat coming from the fire and that's something I'll never forget. I've never felt heat like that before, especially from such a distance. We closed the windows and actually contemplated getting out of the car and running. We saw others evacuating, probably from the building itself or another nearby. I remember seeing a man with a baby running away. Finally we pushed through and got off the bridge. As we drove away we watched through the rear window as the flames circled the building. Later we decided to walk back to see the end result. It was over, the building was destroyed.

Will they allow fireworks next year, or have lessons been learned? You can read here about the fire.

The above pictures were ones that I snapped with my cell phone. There are a few of the fireworks scene in general and the others were from our tortuous taxi ride. The video below is of the scene around midnight in our neighborhood. It went on like this for hours. I only wish the sound on my camera had better quality.