Wedding fireworks for good luck.
My first experience in China was sitting alone next to the luggage carousels from midnight to morning in the Beijing airport as the cleaning crews walked by, waiting for the security gates and ticket counters to open so I could catch my connecting flight. Once I made it to the regional airport and had loaded up my baggage trolley with two stuffed suitcases, I was met by a very enthusiastic Aunt Fong and a couple of representatives from my university. We loaded into a van and made the trip into the lowly country town where I’d be spending the next year living and teaching. All the while I was scanning the roadsides and skylines for information about what this fabled country was like.
Our drive was from the province capital to the somewhat rural, yet still populous northwest corner. We transitioned from the major highway to the local, winding, dusty, country road, and almost as immediately, next to my window were bright orange flashes and the loud drum roll of firecrackers.
I asked the obvious. “Are those firecrackers?”
“YES. DON’T-CHYOO have those … INAMERICA?” responded Miss Liu (Lee-oo), an English teacher at the local middle school who would be my sometimes guide and associate for the fall semester.
“Yes,” I said, “but we don’t set them off on the side of the road…in the middle of the afternoon.”
Since my arrival in China, I heard fireworks or firecrackers every single day. I am not exaggerating, so I don’t mean most of the time. I mean, every morning, before the construction workers began their work, they supposedly chased the evil spirits away by lighting off a string in front of their job site. When people celebrated anything (e.g. weddings, birthdays, acceptance to a good school) they set off firecrackers outside the restaurant. This could be at the beginning of the ceremony for good luck, or I guessed just to live happily and show off. When the monks in the Buddhist temple next door to the university campus performed their demon-chasing or spirit-summoning rituals (I don’t know which) they used firecrackers to wind themselves up. When people felt like being entertained, I suppose, they lit off firecrackers wherever or whenever they pleased.
Like my friend back in Iowa had told me, the people may not have been comfortable enough to speak their minds or hold strong political opinions, but they felt unencumbered to light fires or firecrackers in the streets as they were wont. I became witness to the truth of that statement.
America has written and unwritten rules about certain spaces. Streets are for cars, sidewalks are for people, you don’t spit in a restaurant, you cannot smoke in most places anymore, you need a permit to do any activity that would “disturb the peace.” I never saw these boundaries in China.
When they lit their firecrackers in the street, it was not just a packet of Black Cats, either. It was the pinky-finger-sized red firecrackers connected on a long string, with the whole roll laid out covering about two parking spaces. And when the fun seekers or spirit chasers let loose, the strangest thing was that no one else seemed to really notice. Chinese people take it for granted; firecrackers in the street are as mundane as hearing a lawnmower in America. In fact, where the lawnmower would interrupt my math class in America, the construction workers’ firecrackers interrupted my English class in China- sometimes for a few minutes or more.
Once, in Aunt Fong’s apartment, she handed me a long stick with a long, thick tip.
“Is this incense?” I asked.
No reply.
“In-cense?” I said, louder and slower. She grabbed a lighter.
“Wait, is this a sparkler?” I asked, exasperated.
She flicked the lighter a few times.
“Is this a sparkler- in the house?”
She finally got a flame.
“Is this a sparkler?” I asked again, getting not a little excited.
The paper fuse took some time, but eventually it caught and she laughed at me as I twirled the sparkler around a few times before it died. A few weeks later, I think it was, she pulled a roll of firecrackers out of a drawer and we went out at night and lit them, in the street, just for fun.
No one actually stood around to spectate. Echoing off the hotel awning, the already loud firecrackers were amplified to an intolerable volume.
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