Chinese New Year in Beijing 2009
They started selling fireworks in Beijing today, which does not bode well for my sleep in the upcoming Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) week.
In terms of the volume of fireworks let off in Beijing, think the 4th of July in the US, times 100, for 7 days, 24 hours a day. Also there are no limitations to where people will let off fireworks, so walking around outside on the street is like being in a war zone: you better look carefully that someone isn’t there standing back from a huge firecracker about to go off.
Because of the way Chinese labor works, pretty much everyone gets the week off. In something that has to be the greatest migration of people in history, everyone boards trains and goes home to be with their families.
This means actually that if you ignore the fireworks, Spring Festival is Beijing’s quietest time, as half the city or more goes back home for a week. It’s a pretty busy city normally, with something like 20 million people living here, next to Shanghai Beijing is the most densely populated city in mainland China.
Spring Festival is the biggest holiday, with lots of traditions like giving away envelopes full of cash, making dumplings from scratch, red lanterns everywhere, lucky characters outside every doorway, and of course fireworks - with little shacks selling them on every other street.
