01.25.09
Chinese New Year, in all it’s Glory
There may be no other moment in time in which the sheer madness of the environment eclipses that of the Chinese New Year. For during this brief moment (and by brief moment I am also including the half hour before and after midnight), the Chinese landscape erupts in barrage of explosions, which bears semblance to a large scale all-out ground and aerial assault. With fireworks exploding from every direction, the moment is like no other as 1.3 billion people (minus several minority groups who don’t celebrate it) ring in the new year.
There is a common word in Chinese, 热闹 (re4 nao3), which has no exact English translation. It can be used as both noun and verb refers to hustling, bustling, and noise all about, only with a positive connotation, as opposed to a negative one which most English translations for 热闹 imply. At no other moment is this adjective more appropriate as when the Chinese New Year arrives. Two years ago, when I was still living in Fuzhou, I shot this video in order to capture the 热闹 at the stroke of midnight. I’ve often marveled at the fact that if you didn’t know it was fireworks, you might think it was a battleground scene. Think I could sell this to some tabloids?
The video can be viewed here.
By the way, the reason I didn’t embed the video directly into this post is that whenever I copy and paste the code from Youtube into Wordpress, Wordpress’s handly little Rich Text Editor decides to modify it so that the video will not display. I have already disabled the Rich Text Editor in my wordpress settings, yet it continues modifying my code. If anybody has experienced similar problems and knows how to solve this, please send me a personal e-mail at bensinchina at yahoo dott com. Thanks.
