drunk on fireworks

Early Sunday evening – aka Chinese New Year’s Eve – Chengdu’s streets were nearly deserted. It was eerily quiet and there was an overwhelming sense that something was coming. Then hour by hour, with the deepening darkness, the sky got brighter and brighter.

It happened in street intersections and in front of apartment buildings. Guys would ferry large boxes into the middle of the street, then set them down. They’d stand there for a minute or two looking for the fuse, and once they’d found it you would see a quick flame and then they'd be hightailing it away from the box as fast as they could because in a few seconds the box was shooting fire into the sky. And with the fire came the shrieking and the booming and the thumps of the pieces that fall from the sky after something explodes.

For some of these bursts we were standing close. And by close I mean not more than twenty feet away from the box. So close that instead of hearing the explosions, you felt them compress all of the air around you and throw it into your eardrums with a thud.

There was just one time when a firework didn’t rise as high into the sky as it should have before it exploded. This was when Shi-wen yelled, “Watch out!” and the giant sparks were coming towards us rather than lighting up the sky. I’ve never been that close to fireworks before and it was thrilling and shocking because it felt so wild. Only when pieces of the sky fell onto my head did it feel like I might be standing too close.

For hours the streets were on fire but the only time I was scared was when some kids were lighting firecrackers without paying any attention to the people around them. Funny how a kid playing with matches is scarier than a city full of adults using them to light giant fireworks. And when I say giant fireworks, I mean the kind that large American cities use for their Fourth of July extravaganzas. But in China you can buy these on street corners and then set them off as police cars roll past. It’s definitely different here.

As we were watching fireworks that were a little too close we started talking with a Chinese guy who smelled like liquor. He was thrilled that we could understand each other and told us all sorts of things. He told us how when Chinese people look at North Korea it reminds them of the way China was several decades ago. He told us how you must support the Chinese government now because good things may happen later. And he said that the American President has a hard time doing his job because in the face of upcoming elections he has to please everyone. He noted, with zero irony, that the plans and decisions of Chinese leaders are not hampered by these kinds of concerns.

His views were different – in the same way that our fireworks laws are different – but the conversation still reminded us of how much we are the same. This is because the theme he kept returning to, the one thing he kept saying over and over, was that whatever problems and difficulties there might be between America and China, that these problems are between our two governments. Because the people, the Chinese people and the American people, like you and me, he said… the people of these two countries are friends and we understand each other and get along. Just like us. Look how we understand each other.

We were standing in a doorway as we talked to this guy because standing in the doorway felt a little safer. But even a doorway wouldn’t be safe enough if the fireworks misfired towards the other side of the street. This is because on that side of the street, like on every street corner in Chengdu, there was an orange tent filled to the roof with fireworks. The tent was the source of the boxes that were being lugged into the intersection. But don’t worry, there are safety precautions: each tent has at least one bucket of water and a fire extinguisher out front.

At first we had wandered the streets watching whatever showed up in the sky, but as it got closer to midnight we moved to a friend’s roof and watched the start of an all-out assault. Initially there were a few fireworks here and there, but then suddenly it looked like every corner was exploding and it sounded like the whole sky was erupting. It was magical. Insane and scary and magical.

We watched an hour of this storm. Watched how when one corner of town slowed, the other picked up the slack. It just kept thundering as the smoke of a million small fires smothered the city. The haze made the buildings look eerie and it intensified the light. The sidewalks and streets glowed like a midnight fairy tale, except that it was after midnight and it was also now a new year.

And in the wake of all the magic, as the booms and shrieks grew less and less frequent, the street cleaners came out to cart away the boxes that had carried all of this excitement. Every intersection had them, and in the places with the biggest bombardments whole lengths of street were littered with them.

As they broke down the boxes, the city got a little quieter. Except that the fireworks never really stopped, they just slowed. As I write this, two days later, there are still explosions and pops and showers of fire falling through the sky. And I’m still running to the window to watch them.

Happy Year of the Dragon!