Spring Festival

Happy Chinese New Year everybody!

The New Year was on February 7. On the eve of the new year everybody, including small children who should be nowhere near explosives, goes out to a fireworks stand to load up for the big night. You can get anything from sparklers to industrial sized stadium show fireworks. At midnight on the eve of the new year everyone goes out in front of their apartment gate to set them off. I guess the idea is that on the eve of the new year the evil spirits come to earth and the firecrackers help to scare them away.

So this New Years Eve I loaded my bicycle basket up with a long chain of firecrackers, rockets, and the like and road to Rajdeep's apartment. We set them off outside his apartment gate (not that I really believe evil spirits were going to get us but, better to be safe right?) then we road to our friends' place on the 21st floor of an apartment building - a great place to look down over Tianjin and watch the fireworks madness. We got to their apartment just around midnight and I swear every Chinese person was out in the streets with firecrackers in hand.

There wasn't a second of silence - fireworks filled the sky and the deafening sound of thousands of simultaneous firecrackers being set off was almost unbearable. They were setting these things off in the middle of the street even as cars drove by. ... the view of all this from my friends' flat was really wonderful. It was like a very colorful doomsday.

Well, 5 days later and the fireworks are still going off every second. My crazy neighbors seem to find if necessary to set off long chains of firecrackers outside my apartment building all night long, every hour on the hour. They begin at 4am and continue until about 9am. EVERY NIGHT!! I'm going insane. I can't hear myself think. I can't even hear my TV with the volume on high! I thought of calling the police last night but then, what's the point? This is a national holiday. Everyone is setting off firecrackers. Heck, it's probably the police who are setting those things off outside my window!

The lesson here folks is that, Chinese New Year may sound like an exciting holiday but do yourself a favor and never, NEVER come to China at this time of year! I'll try to get some photos of the fireworks salesmen but I haven't had a chance yet.