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  Spring Festival in China
 
2008-02-06

Spring Festival is the biggest holiday of the year for the Chinese, on par with Christmas in the West. Everything shuts down, the locals all go visit family, and much gift money exchanges hands. Young children suddenly wake up with tonnes of money in hand, and parents get money back from their children working in the cities (in part to help pay for all the giving of money to the younger children and relatives).

It's also a time of big family gatherings, eating Jiaozi (boiled dumplings), and most recently, fireworks. After a long time ban, the government allowed fireworks again for the first time in 2007. The carnage was not small (150 dead nationwide the first night alone), but watching 15+ million people all lighting off extremely large and expensive fireworks at the same time is one of the most awesome things I have ever seen.

On the first night of the festival, the firecrackers start in the afternoon, and the big guns come out at sunset around 6. Things get progressively crazier and crazier until midnight, when things officially start. Then the city goes absolutely bonkers until about 2am, when things start to calm down.

Repeat daily, on varying different scales, for two weeks.

To share the insanity, I invited a bunch of people over to my pad to have a jiaozi making party, and then most of us hung around to watch things start at midnight.

Fortunately, I got lots of videos of the goings on.
[Click on any photo for a larger view]
The eve of Spring Festival dawns quite calm and quiet like any other day here in Beijing.
That's the CCTV tower under construction on the left, and the new IFC-Beijing on the right, which might very well end up being Beijing's tallest building (Note: I pulled that out of my butt).
I went to the market earlier in the day to get some ingredients for jiaozi. You need lots of vegetables and pork to make the filling.
Everybody already gets started with the noisy firecrackers pretty early in the day.
I wish this picture had been framed better.
Here we get going with the making Jiaozi. I suck massively at it, so I just relegated myself to official photographer mode. I don't even know who half of these people are. Alex invited a bunch of people over and my friend Jim and his girlfriend came over with her mom.
Fangfang shows people how it's done.
Fangfang's mom shows people how it's -really- done.
After cooking them, the eating began in earnest. I honestly thought there would be enough food for a small army but most if it ended up being gone by night's end.
Fangfang's mom quickly discovered that the way we were boiling the jiaozi was all wrong, all wrong, and immediately took over the role of top-chef.
Thank goodness, because she did an awesome job.
This is a couple of hours before midnight still, but things are already getting pretty crazy outside.
This video is a bit dull, but gives you an idea of what things are like before the really crazy stuff starts.
This is the nearby Gongti Xilu complex.
It just never stops.
This is the view from my bedroom window. It's weird being -above- all the fireworks for a change.
We're getting to midnight now, and all hell is breaking loose.
You can be forgiven for thinking that the city is being overrun by raging gun battles.
The Gongti Xilu clubs know how to throw a party. It can be a bit dizzying trying to keep track of everything that's going on.
This is at about 1am or so, and I think is the best video of them all. It most clearly shows the non-stop insanity of the fireworks. Check out the car trying to drive past them all about 4:15 into the video.
There are burn marks on the glass in my bedroom where still-burning fireworks have hit it.
Fire doesn't seem to be a big problem here, given that everything is made of solid concrete.
A few days later, a few of us worked our way to Houhai to have some dinner and see what everybody else was doing during the holidays.
Surprisingly, not many people out and about.
Those that are out and about are lighting fireworks.
Fast forward to the last day of the festival, where the fireworks are second only to the first night.
For some reason, I love these fireworks.
This is a view of the fireworks from my bedroom.
I love these wiggly-worm fireworks.
Or giant flamethrower ones.
If you didn't know what was going on, you might believe it's the apocalypse come to pass.
The entire city smells of smoke and sulphur for days.
 
 
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