And, honestly, no one should be surprised. For the past week that I've been in town, I've had what sounds like a twenty-one (or thousand-and-one) gun salute daily wake-up call; though, it's really just string after string of red poppers. From morning to mid-day and well into the night, the Chinese love of firecrackers is apparent.
Even more apparent, is the lack of regulation. Last Friday night, Guo Wei (my Chinese friend), Mike (my American colleague), and I bought six sticks of explosives. We gave one to a couple neighborhood kids. The other five? We set them off over a particularly rank-smelling stretch of Beijing public water flow. The fire shot across the ravine, almost into traffic. Beers (pijiu) in hand, the Americans got nervous when the police rolled up with their lights flashing. Guo Wei, however, reached for another explosive and the lighter.
Most of these explosions are just for the noise, no color, no fire. Like I said, it sounds like guns forever firing all over the city.
Still, for the final night of New Year celebrations, I expected more.
Monday evening, Mike and I walked around the Gongti and Sanlitun areas, doing some fun-hunting. I bought a paper lantern and set it off from a bridge between the Workers' Stadium and the Workers' Gymnasium, where I had worked during the Olympic Games.
After watching the lantern float out of sight, I said, "I just want something to happen." Then, we noticed two vans pulling into the parking lot of the Workers' Stadium. Six men unloaded at least fifty giant boxes, got out their lighters, and the show began.
Let me explain something that's very important: the Chinese love their inventions more than anything (noodles and umbrellas, anyone?). And the Chinese invented fireworks.
Once the guys at the Workers' Stadium started their show, I stood in mouth-gaping awe of a seemingly impromptu show that rivals nearly every Fourth of July spectacular I've seen in America. (Moreover, I doubt the Boston Pops would condescend to accompany such a spectacle.)
I got my bearings, finally, and looked around. Every direction played host to a similar scene: giant green umbrellas of fire, spirally white shooters, haphazard red crackly explosions. The smell of sulphur and burnt paper permeated the air so dense with smoke I couldn't see to cross the street.
We watched for nearly two hours before we decided to take a break at the Rickshaw. We grabbed some fries and wrote our name on the pool table waiting list.
Our turn came and we met Kim, a diplomat with the Algerian Embassy. We played a few games with him and he introduced us to some of the establishment's regulars. Kim was driving home in our direction and offered to give us a ride, we accepted and left.
When I asked why his car was parked facing the wrong way, he said , "You know, sometimes the police, they don't like us, because the diplomatic plates mean they can't stop us."
He barely finished his sentence before his American friend ran up to us on the street, yelling "The CCTV building is on fire! Want to check it out?" And, of course, we did.
Piled in Kim's Algerian government-issued 1980s era Mercedes-Benz, we rushed to the scene, blaring the likes of Clapton and Dire Straits, driving in the bike lane or in the wrong lane altogether.
The traffic thinned considerably as many roads around the CCTV complex were closed. As with everything else in China, as long as you look like you're supposed to be doing whatever you're trying to do, no one with stop you. And even if they try to stop you, they can't if you just keep doing it.
So we kept going: we drove the car with diplomatic plates and Cheshire Cat grins through blocked off roads and lines of police tape until we were directly across the street from the fiery tower. We parked, got out, and, along with hundreds of nearby residents and hotel guests, we took photos and watched the tower smoulder.
Still, with the ultimate fire-works show in progress at CCTV, just down the green swirleys and red poppers were ignited.
Not until the next day was it revealed that illegal fireworks were to blame for the fire. I think only ones that destroy multi-billion yuan buildings fall into that category.
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