As I mentioned in yesterday's post on Chinese New Year fireworks in Beijing, the action is fast and furious and often very close to buildings. Last night, The Place, a shopping mall across the street from our apartment put on an hour-long show in the bike lane directly in front of their buildings. We watched from our apartment for a while, then Andrew (12) and I went down to the street to get a front-row view.

It was absolutely nutty as you can see from the photos. The flaming bits regularly hit the buildings with some parts flying up over the buildings on nearby rooftops. I suppose it's not a real danger, but it did give me pause. I don't think you'd ever see this in the US; maybe we're just too wimpy...

View from our apartment:

At street level you can see how close these are to the buildings.

This is a 1/90th second shot (pretty short for fireworks shots). You can see how bright it got. Lots of boom.

Andrew really enjoyed watching the fireworks up close.