Happy Tiger New Year! (Oh, and Happy Valentines Day too!) We spent New Year's Eve in our apartment in Beijing this year. The fireworks were absolutely crazy. They started around 6:00pm and kept going until well past 2:00am, non-stop.

There are no "official" fireworks shows like you'd think of them in the US. These are just random people who buy fireworks at the million fireworks tents that pop-up around Beijing near CNY. They drag their load onto random street corners and then light them off. As you can see from the photos and video below, these are often pretty serious shows, very close to buildings. You can buy a "show-in-a-box" for around $75-150 USD or maybe even higher; light one fuse and the step back.

I imagine the scene was repeated on virtually every block in Beijing (if not more, since we live in an area with lots of expats and hotels.) Spring Festival lasts two weeks, so we have a lot more fireworks to go...

This was probably the coolest set of the night, next to our apartment.

We were pretty much right underneath this one.

Here's Michael (9) playing with a sparkler.

Here's video I shot from our apartment at midnight. You can hear a roar in the background; that's from fireworks going off all around us. The big dark spot in the scene is a construction pit, so we have an even better view of the mayhem near by. The light colored building in the middle of the scene is the Shangri-La Kerry Centre Hotel.