You’ve heard of an all-night bender. You know, paycheck comes in Friday night, you hit the ATM, grab a wad of cash and drink yourself into the next morning. Well in China they don’t have benders, they have crackers. Everywhere you go you can hear the sound of fireworks exploding.
Now when I think of fireworks, I think of beautiful streams of light whistling through the air, then exploding in a burst of light. You sit down on the grass or at the beach, lay back with someone special, maybe even get a kiss if all goes well. Not so much in China.
You see, Chinese fireworks are more of the personal variety. When people feel like a pick-me-up or have recently come into some good fortune, they celebrate with a fistful of fireworks. The trouble is, these fireworks don’t elegantly whiz up into the air, but rather go off like artillery fire. The first time I heard some, I dived into a nearby pile of garbage so as to avoid the firing squad that I was sure was behind me. Even now that I know they are fireworks, I still get adrenaline pumping through my veins and instinctively check my torso for bullet wounds.
However this obsession with fireworks has been hard for the Chinese. It seems that now any excuse is a good excuse for fireworks. People can’t stop cracking off. Children are going hungry when their father comes home penniless, smelling like smoke and in an overly celebratorial mood. Companies are going under due to overblown ‘party’ budgets. Even the elderly are blowing their hard earned savings on a few seconds of chaotic explosion.
That is why the government has stepped in to try and curb this social ill:
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Hello webmaster…Thanks for the nice read, keep up the interesting posts..what a nice Sunday