When the Chinese take over the world there will be more fireworks. Way more fireworks.
The Chinese will find any earthly excuse to blow up shit: birthdays, weddings, project completion, Fridays, Tuesdays, just-because days. Explosions are generally a good way to start your day; they drive away the bad spirits. It's like having a cup of coffee, only it's bigger and louder and far more colorful.
I thought I had grown used to the familiar popping and booming sound that, along with honks and throat hoarks, are the soundtrack of Beijing, but nothing could have prepared me for Chinese New Year.
The boys and I nearly missed Chinese New Year. It is a two-week festival. We were in Myanmar for the first week and a time miscalculation got us waylaid in Thailand during the second. We got home late on the last night of New Year's. It was past mid-night and the fireworks curfew is 10:00 p.m.--in theory at least. The boys were half asleep so I told them we would surely catch the celebration next year. They were too tired to be disappointed.
Fortunately, China does not disappoint. Sometimes it's bewildering, dirty and incomprehensible, but it does not disappoint; the Lantern Festival made sure of that. The Lantern Festival bookends Chinese New Year. It is celebrated on the 15th day of the first Lunar Month on the Chinese calendar. The idea of the Lantern Festival is to trick the heavenly Jade Emperor. Legend has it that some Chinese hunters killed the Emperor's heavenly crane. The red-hot Jade-king responded by sending his horsemen to burn down the whole of China. The heavenly Jade Princess felt sorry for the Chinese people and warned them of her father's designs. A wise man reasoned that if everyone lit lanterns and fireworks the Emperor would be fooled into thinking China was immolated. It worked! Naturally, Eli brought up the minor point that as a God, Mr. Jade really should have known better. I reminded him that we believe in Santa Claus and Leprechauns, putting the matter squarely to rest.
We didn't know about the Lantern Festival until the day of festival itself. It's not like there is a big sign announcing it and, if there was, we couldn't read it anyway. I asked our Ayi the best place to see the Lantern Festival. She responded with a look that confirms that I have fewer brain cells than a lily pad. (I am used to this look in China.) After a careful moment she said: "You go to Beijing." Okay, I got that much, so: "Where in Beijing?" I ask. "Anywhere," (My-chickens-are-smarter-than-you-look resumes.)
She was not kidding. The Lantern Festival is omnipresent and is especially good when viewed from the 28th floor of our centrally-located apartment. Perhaps we are a little naive, but how were we to understand the whole damn city was going to explode? How was I supposed to know that every last able-bodied Beijinger would go pyro? Blowing up shit is Chinese entitlement; it is part of the national psyche. They take fuse duty as seriously as green tea and tests.
As an American raised in the the litigious era, I was used to controlled fireworks shows, shuttling down to a pre-ordained location, circling for an hour to find $50 parking and waiting for 3 more hours to see a 20-minute, musically-choreographed, computer-driven spectacle being ignited from a barge surrounded by fire boats. No way in hell would I ever set off my own fireworks and I always kept a good, safe distance when friends did.
But THIS IS CHINA, as we've grown accustomed to saying, and our first-ever Lantern Festival experience began as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon. We have a panoramic view and our necks got a workout turning to and fro watching the competing displays. We ogled for an hour when one of us had the bright idea of taking it to the streets. Me, who hates loud noises and is terrified of fire, hastily agreed. Everything somehow sounds good to me in China--like riding my bike in rush hour, eating scorpions and taking a 4-hour per day Chinese class.
The Hutong neighborhood adjacent South of us was proving once again that humble people know how to party. There was a fireworks shop erected in the middle of the street, because, the middle of an already-congested street is a great place to pile enough explosives to send the whole of Beijing to the moon. They were selling all manner of TNT classified as way-beyond legal in the US. We are talking 10,000-round fire crackers. Think about that: 10,000 round wheels. We can't buy more than 10-round poppers back home if my memory serves me well. And crates--crates, I tell you--of fireworks with enough powder to shoot colorful sparks 250 feet skyward.
We meandered our way through the narrow streets, watching our neighbors light up the night. I had my hands futilely covering my ears. Sparks and rockets were literally whizzing around us. The booms echoed off the highrises, steel and concrete. I thought of my BFF Phaedra working the Seattle burn ward on July 4th and began to laugh because, fuck it, you only live once. It was the errant rocket that blew sideways and set a car 10-feet from us ablaze that forced us to retreat.... To the fireworks stand..... To buy explosives: bottle rockets and fire balls and the 10,000-round wheel of death. And hand them to our children. I admit, holding the rocket launching tube was exhilarating. The kick-back was thrilling. The lights and sulfur smell of power was intoxicating.
We headed home, limbs surprisingly intact, at 10:00 pm. The boys were exhausted from the day's danger and folly and actually asked to go to bed. I wished them pleasant times in the Land of Nod and took a seat by the window when I noticed a calvacade of cars dumping hundreds huge crates on the sidewalk across the street. There was a flurry of activity as men scurried about lighting fuses and then jumped into their cars. Drive-by Fireworks gangsters. Count down 3-2-1 and the windows began to rattle, the ground vibrating. It was the best show yet. My kids managed to sleep through it. I could not stop laughing. Fireworks never get old. Nor does adventure.
Our upstairs neighbor Mark Griffith took the footage of and processed this incredible video montage of the lantern festival fireworks:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/niffgurd/6834027271/
