When Imagethief was a lad he was (as his father will gladly tell you) something of a pyro. I always looked forward to the fourth of July, Independence Day, when fireworks are traditionally set off in the United States. They were banned in San Francisco, where I was living, but sold legally ten minutes up the freeway in Daly City. Every year we would head out to one of the plywood shacks that used to spring up on the fringes of car dealerships and mall parking lots and buy a box of fireworks.

These were mostly innocuous stuff, ranging from fountains, which were the best things legally available, down to the low-wattage excitement of the "snakes", little pills of charcoal that would expand into little strings of charcoal soot when you lit them. Pulse pounding. A few things, such as ground flowers, took on extra pizazz when you threw them, but after accidentally lofting one into the middle of a group of relaxing parents one fourth of July that embellishment was banned on pain of abandonment on a hillside.

Bottle rockets and firecrackers were illegal everywhere, as I recall. But I would sometimes head down into Chinatown, where they were sold out of the backs of cars by dangerous looking Cantonese kids. I used those to blow the crap out of one of those giant Millennium Falcon toys and a bunch of other unfortunate playthings. More than one went off in my hand. Looking back, its a miracle I still have all my fingers.

Which is why it's probably a good thing I didn't grow up in China where, during Chinese New Year, essentially anything combustible is legal. If you've never been in a Chinese city for Chinese New Year, it's one of those things you ought to do once in your life. It's almost impossible to convey the sense of pyrotechnic madness that engulfs the towns, especially at the stroke of midnight, when the Inferno is all but conjured from the ether. The stuff you can buy here is completely outrageous. Something like a megaton* of fireworks will be set off in Beijing over the holiday. The only reason why the city won't be obliterated is that they don't detonate everything at once. At peak times sound was like a continuous peal of thunder. Or perhaps the Battle of the Somme. Police cars and ambulances were everywhere last night (they were about the only things on the road), and apparently one of the buildings in my complex briefly caught fire.

A couple of years ago I headed out to do some photography over Yuanxiaojie, the dumpling-eating festival that closes the holiday period. I didn't have a tripod, so I had to handhold my camera for long exposures, which led to predictably uneven results. This year I borrowed a tripod from Kaiser and headed out to do some photography on the street in front of my apartment and, at the stroke of midnight, in the local xiaoqu neighborhood just up the road. The results were good, and some of the photos are posted on my Facebook page. They're public, you don't need a Facebook account to see them. A few thumbnails (they all link to the gallery):

Fireworks  Fireworks  Fireworks

Mrs. Imagethief also came out, despite being eight months along, and shot some video of the action. I've cut that into two minutes of concentrated bedlam and posted it on YouTube. It's not edited with any particular rhythm or grace, but it does give an idea of the scene. I especially invite my friends in the US who have similar fourth of July memories to check that out. A frame grab (linked to the YouTube page):

Ka-blamm!

Ka-blamm!

It got a bit hairy at times. I ended up getting peppered with shrapnel and soot. Once I was so close to a major explosion than an uncle standing near a more sensibly positioned Mrs. Imagethief burst into laughter. But what a thing to see. It is true sensory overload.

Enjoy the pictures and the video. They don't do the real thing justice, but I hope they capture part of it. I wish all readers a happy Chinese New Year and a prosperous year of the rat!

Previously on Imagethief:

The fire and the smoke: Yuanxiaojie photographs

Decadent Beijing suburbanites give me da bomb 

*Exaggeration.