It's actually been one of the quietest Spring Festivals I can remember (although maybe I spared myself the brunt of the onslaught by hardly setting foot outside in the evenings). I hear folks are grumbling that fireworks have got very expensive this year (there was a huge price war between two or three major distributors a few years back; I wonder if they've now consolidated into a monopoly?); and it seems they've been rationing themselves, saving their arsenals for a few really BIG splurges (11pm to 2am on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day was BIG this year), rather than keeping up an almost continuous barrage, as has often happened in previous years.
But a couple of nights ago, things got a bit crazy. For a wee while in the middle of the evening, I was finding it seriously annoying, as I was mired in yet another huge editing task and it was becoming impossible to hear myself think with all the window-rattling detonations going on in the courtyard outside. Yesterday morning, the damp air was acrid with smoke, and the compound of my apartment complex was carpeted with dust and ash and burnt cardboard casings. I haven't seen such an extreme 'firework hangover' after a single night of madness for two or three years now, I don't think. Perhaps it's just a case of people realising the holiday is nearly over, and starting to use up the ordnance they've been holding back until now.
Well, I don't think I'd noticed before that the 13th day of the Chinese New Year was anything very special (though every day throughout this interminable holiday has some distinctive significance, only a few of them are a pretext for extra special firework frenzies - the 5th day is usually the biggest of the lot); but I gather that, like Day 5, this is a day especially associated with Guan Yu, a revered 3rd century BCE general widely honoured as a 'God of War' (and as a 'God of Wealth' or 'God of Prosperity', because he was so successful on the battlefield); being a military chap, he likes loud noises, oh yes. I don't suppose they had gunpowder in his day; but over the past thousand years or so, he's certainly become very familiar with it!
When I quizzed my China-wise friend The Weeble as to what was going on on Tuesday night, he replied, "Foreplay for Thursday's Cataclysm" (which is an all too plausible band name!).
Oh god, yes - tonight is the Lantern Festival, the last day of the main phase of the New Year's festivities: every firework left in the city is going to be let off tonight. Where did I leave those earplugs?
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