By law, I’m supposed to say “Spring Festival” to describe Chinese New Year but let’s not be so politically correct and call it what it really is. The tradition of Chinese New Year is that you chase bad spirits away with fireworks. Beijing has lifted a 12 year ban on fireworks within the 5th ring road which means that Beijing is going to seem like a war zone as revelers unleash 12 years of pent-up pyromaniacal frustration.
For the past 2 weeks, the firework stands have been sprouting to life and their inventories have seem to grow way outside the bounds of their little tents. At first passing, I was stunned at the size of the packages you could purchase. They have battery’s of 36″ mortar tubes that weigh 60lbs and can fire an impressive 18 shots of flowering starbursts that would rival your local country club’s Fourth of July.
So as the big dumpling drops tomorrow at midnight, the men of Capital Paradise (including myself ) will unleash a form of armageddon that only Bush and his troops could rival. The management of Capital Paradise has kindly arranged to clear out a parking lot, set up launch tubes and hire a fire brigade to extinguish all the secondary fires that (apparently) happen.
Note: Last year, a resident left his car in the parking lot while traveling outside the country. In an attempt to keep dust off, he covered it with a canvas cover which caught fire and scorched the paint on the roof and hood of his car. A few minutes later, a row of bushes went up in flames. With skill and precision which can only be attained from countless Chinese fire drills, the firefighters extinguished the flames.
Below is a photo of my current stash. It contains all the basics…firecrackers, roman candles, fountain, screaming rockets, large bottle rockets, a small battery of mortars, and some sparklers for Madeline. But there’s also something else in the box behind it…shhh…read on.
This is China…and I figured that if I ever had an opportunity to buy something not typically available in the US, it would be in the form of fireworks. So while negotiating a giant, $75 mortar box, I asked another shopper (fluent in Chinese and English) to ask the stand owner if he had anything “special” that wasn’t on display. He took me to the back of his tent and uncovered boxes of the holy grail of all fireworks…commercial mortar balls! He reached in and grabbed a small one along with a 25″ steel launch tube and we walked across the street. He lit the ball, dropped it in the tube and I was treated to that low, gut wrenching thud as the charge propelled it a hundred feet into the sky. A second later, it filled the entire sky with a bloom of purple and gold.
We walked back to his stash and I asked for “surga jayga”, “sooga nayga”, and “arga nayga hen dada” which translates to some pretty serious pyrotechnics. I got ten of the ones he demonstrated, four frighteningly large 6″ diameter ones, and two really “big ones”. In the photo below, I placed one of each next to some familiar items to show their massive scale…and yes, they scare the bajeezus out of me.
In 48 hours or so, I will either be posting about an awesome Chinese New Year’s eve or else I will be posting about the quality of medical care available in Beijing. Most likely, I’ll ask someone with a bit more experience to light these while I stand 100 feet away as my eyes and hands are crucial to my profession.
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