January 25th saw my third New Year in a month. But being in Beijing for the Chinese New Year meant that it was a far bigger affair than the sparklers we were given one the train for the Russian one. There's been non-stop explosions right across the city since I arrived and they're not even letting up now, in fact this evening they've picked up. But no other day has come close to New Years itself.
From the moment I got up, the whole city sounded like it was under seige. Normally illegal in the city center, just for the Spring Festival any form of high explosives seem to be allowed. Everywhere you turned fire crackers and fireworks were being set off in roads and on pavements with no real clearence zone inforced, and at times they were litterally flying at you from all angles, even out of windows. Heading to our favourite street for drinks, a narrow ally type road, the ground was on fire and every few meters a group of people were detonating everything they had. Cars continued to appear out of the glow and smoke of the otherwise dark street. Upon reaching an exploding box of fireworks, the cars would take as wide a birth as they could, sometimes as much a half a meter.
Seeing a couple of cars, including police drive straight over what they hadn't realised to be a lit box of fireworks, we expected to see one blown into the air anytime soon, and was always amazed to see even cyclists appear unharmed from both directions through the bonfire like haze. The whole evening you are rained upon by the remnants from the explosions in the sky, and wading through the red paper left by the ones on the ground.
Every now and then we would be startled (or have the life scared out of us) by a new creation we hadn't yet encountered. One in particular would be like a nuclear bomb going off (or I can only imagine), literally shaking the ground and bleaching everything in white light for a moment. I did my best to capture one of these on camera in a way that isn't just a bright white image (see above).
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