Chinese = Fireworks

Tonight is Lantern Festival, which ends the two week Spring Festival, which follows Chinese New Year. We've heard fireworks for those two weeks, but things really shifted into high gear tonight around dark when a light snow started falling and the fireworks level started rising.

There's no picture with this post because a photograph cannot convey the experience of standing on the sidewalk, snowflakes tickling our faces, watching the Chinese "do" fireworks. In a 360 degree circle around our small campus, ordinary citizens have turned into pyromaniacs. The sidewalks and driveways are filled with people lighting firecrackers and fountains. Flashes of light and color burst overhead and reflect in the windows, while sound reverberates off highrise walls. Cabs trying to enter the campus wait while small crowds shoot off the kind of fireworks that move your ribs and set off car alarms. And this is not a 20 minutes and over situation. We are well into the third hour of this man-made thunder and lightning storm.

I'm sorry to say that the Fourth of July can't hold a sparkler to this.