When I told people I would be staying in town for the Chinese New Year, many were surprised. To me it made total sense to want to be in China and witness a Chinese New Year first hand, and Shanghai still seems to be the place where all the action is. My Chinese friends and colleagues, however, were appalled at this thought, as were my western friends. The general response was “but, it’ll be so noisy and you won’t be able to sleep for all the fireworks.”
You can imagine, therefore, that I started to get a bit nervous about all the fireworks and was expecting non-stop banging 24/7 for an entire week and to be driven up the walls with despair. I prepared for the worst and went as far as to look out ear-plugs…
The reality though was quite different. Yes there was a lot of noise, yes there were fireworks and firecrackers set off at crazy times, yes the city was covered with perhaps not the healthiest blanket of smoke from all the fireworks… but… it was amazing! The Chinese do fireworks very well and I think it is great that they celebrate with such aplomb. I loved every single minute of it!
In this case, a video speaks louder than words so I’ve uploaded one for you to look at. Imagine this for hours and hours on end. Even I was awed to some kind of state of silence...
My Chinese lesson of the day is: 煙花 yān huā – which means… yup, you guessed it… fireworks.
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