The War of the Ox

Sunday night at the stroke of midnight, Shanghai ushered in the new year a month later than the rest of us. The Chinese year of the Rat was over, hello year of the Ox. It should come as no surprise that littered around Shanghai's financial districts were honorary giant golden bulls resembling the one flexing on Wall St. Rumor has it there is no Chinese year of the bear. This most important holiday is celebrated a far cry from pretty trees and carols about silent nights, with the locals instead opting to throw a firework show to end all firework shows.

First, imagine the best firework show you've ever seen. Most of you, being from Boston, would muse that the Boston Pops accompanying the millions of dollars of pyrotechnics on the Esplanade would be your pick. That show was a highly condoled burst of explosives choreographed by professionals, detonated almost a quarter of a mile from where you stood, leaning out from underneath a tree to get a better look. In Shanghai, a city of 17 million people, everyone lights off a box of their very own fireworks... in their own backyard.

These fireworks are no humble sparklers. Some, designed for noise, look like someone stole a role of bullets while Rambo wasn't looking and wrapped them in red paper before lighting it. Others, designed to fly into the sky and explode into pretty colors (the one's we're used to), come in 1'x1' boxes, armable by a small battery driven fuse in the corner. Somehow, either brilliantly simple or mindlessly stupid, these baby war toys have been made accessible to the masses.

And people do not seek clear areas, or at least what in the west would constitute a clear area. No, the Chinese are more than content to set them off on the walkway between apartment buildings, with sparks splattering the windows of residents on floors 8-20, with the noise echoing between the complex walls, as a gunshot through a canyon. Standing inside the bedroom, watching awestruck as fireworks exploded beneath me, a dread fascination to view the experience from the balcony gripped me. As I opened the door, I was hit by a wall of noise, a crushing physical blow of sound waves to my body; I hesitated. It was like stepping into war. Between the bursting shells in the sky and the ground being littered with the rat-tat-tat of the noise makers, the only thing to do besides stare in awe and cover my ears was to be thankful I was in China, and not someplace else.

Eventually the mayhem died away, visibility was reduced from miles to meters by smoke, families retreated inside. The government gives all employees 3 days off work, but only the first and last are big firework nights. Technically fireworks aren't legal inside the ring road, but that doesn't seem to stop too many people. I've talked to other expats who've been here for new years past, and they seemed to agree it's been bigger (making it harder to sleep) in years past. Perhaps the reduction in firework boom corresponds to economic boom, but if my past week has been any indication, China still has plenty of boom to go around.