Happy Chinese New Year!

Well, my friends, it is Chinese New Year (春節), I wish everyone happiness, peace, good health and prosperity. Have a drink and celebrate!

This photo is from Chinese New Year back from 20 year ago – 1992, nothing fancy, but a lot of good memories!

It was my first year in China and we went out to celebrate Chinese New Year to one of the local restaurants. As you know China invented gun powder and maybe for that reason or some other cultural reason they go really out of control with fireworks. Back then they were not fancy as far as color or flying abilities, but boy, they were so loud. When I first came to China, maybe on a second or third day after arrival I heard from far away what sounded like an automatic gun, AK47 or similar. I was puzzled to hear this sound, as I knew no one has guns there and definitely not going to shoot it in Beijing. A few days later I discovered that it was fireworks making those sounds. They made belts of them, by attaching each individual firecracker to each other, hanging it somewhere and then lighting it at the bottom. In a few seconds you have couple minutes of intense firepower. The kicker is that those belts came in different sizes – I mean, the power of individual firecrackers in them. I remember some of them being at least one inch thick, like little bombs. Tie them together and let fire one after another, that is some crazy fireworks!

So on Chinese New Year they went really nuts, those belts were hanging on the door handles, tree branches, air conditioners etc, and they lighted them up right around midnight, all at the same time.  Talk about deafening damage to your ear drums – I felt like I was going to be deaf after that for sure.

So anyway, I found this photo in my archives from 1992 Chinese New Year. Fireworks at its best.