Light the Fuse and Run

After a couple of hours at the wall we made our way through a winding mountain pass, heading for the Ming Tombs. Along the way we experienced a wide range of road conditions – from sleep inducing to bone jarring – as well as some spectacular scenery.

We passed through many villages, most of which had fireworks stalls set up on the sides of the road. Peter (our driver) said that he wanted to stop and get some for his daughter because they would much cheaper in the villages than they would be in the city. I was all for this as it would give me an opportunity to buy some as well, under Peter’s expert supervision. When we pulled up Peter got out, and I then opened my door, causing Peter to block my exit while he explained that he should go alone first to sus out the prices – obviously if they saw me, the prices would increase quite significantly. Once he had sorted out the prices (and possibly a kick back for himself) he came back and said that it was OK for me to get out now – Jenene and the kids stayed in the car. I bought a good range of fireworks all for the princely sum of $4!

Officially, fireworks have been banned in China since the mid 90’s. The reality though, is that we did not have one waking moment from Friday to Tuesday when our ears weren’t objected to the obnoxious exploding sounds of these things being set off. In fact, quite a few of our sleeping moments were rudely interrupted by the same sounds, only during the night the fireworks were being set off so close to our apartment that we could smell the powder fumes.

If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. So we did. We let off the red ones which basically made a lot of noise and did little else. We lit up our sparklers which sparkled and occasionally let off a little pop of exploding light. The best ones were the box of 16 that you set on the ground and they actually shoot up into the air and explode into different colours, just like the real ones. Being novices at this though, we found that once they got up in the air they tended to shoot off in different directions, hence quite a few of ours shot out sideways straight into the building and windows near our launch sight. Harper thought this was great and we had both had a good belly chuckle as we watched. We certainly didn’t hang around for too long after the last one had fizzled out though.