Year of the Pig
June 27th, 2007It’s officially the year of the pig/Chinese New Year, and I have never seen or heard anything like this evening.
Dinner on the eve of Chinese New Year is like a religious event (Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday or Erev Rosh Hashanah or the first night of Passover) for westerners. The Chinese go to their home towns to be with their families and have a special dinner together. Knowing I would be alone (or not with Chinese people) on this very important holiday, my assistant at work invited me to join her and her family for dinner at a restaurant. The place was packed, as were many of the Chinese restaurants in town. And people started setting off firecrackers on our way to the restaurant at 5 pm. The most exciting part for me was when they lit the firecrackers right on the sidewalk, underneath the power lines!
I got back to my apartment around 7 pm, and the noise was unbelievable.
People were lighting fireworks from every direction. At 11:30 pm I had to venture outside to see what midnight would bring, because everyone told me that midnight to 1 am would be the loudest and brightest…
They were not kidding. No matter what direction I faced the cloudy sky was flashing with color - red, of course, was quite dominant this evening! And in front of every doorstep, including my own, which is down a narrow lane about 20-25 feet in width, were piles and piles of cardboard and ash - debris from used fireworks. Midnight to about 12:20 was simply out of control. On the larger streets, at nearly every intersection, both on the sidewalks and sometimes in the middle of the street, guys were setting off cannons and huge boxes filled with fireworks - not just firecrackers. We are talking huge, high, multicolored fireworks that lay people were setting off all throughout
the city. I have never seen cars (mostly taxis) drive within feet of
live firework cannons… It was complete and utter sensory overload.
And all I could think about was how this had to be one of the most unsafe things I had every experienced in my life!
And the noise has not stopped. It is now just after 1:30 in the morning, and the skies are continuing to light up everywhere with incessant booms echoing around my entire ground floor apartment. It is crazy! My colleagues in the office told me I would not be able to sleep tonight on account of the noise, and they were 100% correct.
Happy new year and may the year of the golden pig bring you good fortune! Gong shi fa cai! Shin nian kwai le!
- Lesli