Fireworks

St. Louis knows itself some fireworks.

We lived in St. Louis for 6 years before moving to China, and we never left town for Independence Day. The fireworks over the Mississippi River, watched from underneath the Arch - that was quite a show.

But after the show our neighbors put on this evening, I realize.

Americans don't know fireworks.

China knows itself some fireworks.

We watched these from our home, and my photos don't do the show justice. Any direction we looked, we could see a show to rival St. Louis. The noise was so intense that Dave didn't realize I was yelling his name, 3 feet away from him. The smoke was thick, which explains the distortion on the photos. And the fireworks came from everywhere - our next door neighbors, high rise balconies, courtyards between two apartment buildings.

you can see the streak of the next firework as it leaves
the ground below, as well as its sister above.
these left from our lane, just 200m from our front door.

these fireworks are peeking out from between
two highrise apartment complexes.
they must have been set off in the small courtyard.

I'll share a primer on Chinese New Year in a later post, as its getting pretty late tonight. But I just had to share the show that we experienced off of our rooftop balcony, beginning around 11:50pm and only just now tapering off, 30 minutes later.

And still the rumblings continue, just not quite as close or as bright. They may well run until daybreak. Impressively, our girls slept through the entire show. We now have confirmed that we could live in a war zone, and at least our children would be well rested.