big cities in little china - pt 2

beijing

now, i'm sure chinese new year is probably not the best time to use as an example of "typical" beijing, unless of course, that beijing is usually covered in thick gun powder smoke, and sounds like beirut in 1986. i have never seen or heard so many fireworks.

there was no official sydney harbour bridge style fireworks display, rather everyone just hosting there own on every street corner. and every street. and every alley. basically everywhere. it got to the point, that in an hour of walking, i didn't put my foot down and not step on spent fireworks.

around 8pm we headed out for a drink and to see what was on, and were confronted with a fairly sleepy town, aside from the occasional explosion. but come 11pm, the whole city just spilled out of their houses and started blowing shit up. the quiet family celebrations were over. at one stage we saw guys walking along with boxes of fireworks the size of washing machines...no wait.... that's one firework, and they're just lighting it up in the middle of the street. 4 lanes of traffic just stops for a while as it goes off, and then just drives around the spent carcass.

at the end of the night, as we snuck around the darkened stairwells and plant rooms of the upper, and dare i say it, thoroughly out of bounds floors of our highrise hotel looking for the roof, we were wondering how far we could push this experience. we were finally confronted with a door, that looked decidedly alarmed, but none the less was as far up as we could go. we showed our age and chose to break in to the revolving restaurant above the roof instead. there were cleaners in there, who looked very uncomfortable at our presence, but i just don't think they knew how to say, i'm sorry, we're closed. damn it was a good view though.

the fireworks continued for 5 days. very few that went fizz, whoop or ssshshshshshshshshpop, but a lot that went bang.