This is my friendly neighbourhood firework stall. You find one of these temporary kiosks every few blocks or so, and they'll be doing a fairly brisk business for the next two weeks - then disappear just as suddenly as they popped up a few days ago.
I failed to catch it in this picture, but the guy in the grey parka was smoking a cigarette as he pondered his purchases.
Yes, of course there's a sign warning that you shouldn't do this. But enforcement is patchy; it's more of a guideline.
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Christmas shops here are a relatively new equivalent. A shop to let suddenly becomes stocked with as much Xmas tat as you can cram into a hastily renovated floor-space with a depressed middle-aged man and his enslaved son who must endure hour after hour of carols from a mounted reindeer head. We've even come to a point past when the likes of Slade and Noddy Holder and that drunk Irish guy with rotten teeth singing about New York are just as annoying as the once tasteful Sinatra et al so almost everything they play at these places starts to get on your wick; Lord knows what the hell he forces himself to endure is like.
I cheered him up with my ongoing shenanigans of trying to get the old fairy lights to work (he sold replacement bulbs). I was a regular customer much to his bemusement, not that he complained mind, and he'd always offer me one of his new LED sets but no, I had to persevere (with little success of course) which lightened his mood a little.
These shops of course also go as quickly as they come, the seasonal situation meaning that for the rest of the year no one dares show any interest in renting the place.
I haven't seen anyone setting up a firework stall in a mall retail space. I suspect there's a rule against that. I think they're all temporary structures, shacks or tents like this one.
And somewhere in China, somewhere in Beijing during this coming fortnight, I'm sure at least one of these places is going to BLOW UP.
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