things that go boom
You come from a country where fireworks sales to the general public are quite tightly restricted and then you move to Changsha when you're still young enough to do stupid shit...
I still have all my digits and no notable scars, somehow.
31 December 1999 as the clock ticked over to midnight and the calendar flipped over to 1 January 2000 West Street in Yangshuo suddenly erupted with the roar, fire, smoke, and rapidly moving debris of the most intense concentration of fireworks I had seen up to that point in my life. All the revellers leaped up onto their chairs and tables and clung to each other for some shared delusion of safety as bits of expended firework bounced off us.
Spring Festival/Chinese New Year in Changsha in 2000 felt like being in all the news footage of air raids you've ever seen but with the light and sound cranked up to eleven. There were all the people in our immediate neighbourhood gathered in the courtyard outside happily setting off every kind of firework imaginable, from giant rolls of crackers to things that shoot up in the air and explode. There was all the "shoot up in the air and explode" things from all the surrounding neighbourhoods and across the city. And every now and then there was a flash of light across the sky followed by an immense, deep, rumbling boom. At one point a neighbour's box of mortar-like explodey things slightly malfunctioned, sending a small bomb scooting across the ground straight at the group I was standing with. We all moved much faster than usual. It was a bit scary - the whole experience, not just the malfunctioning box of mortar-like explodey things - but it was also quite exhilirating.
Then I moved up to Taiyuan, where the fireworks situation was a bit of a come-down after Changsha.
I mean, it's not really a very fair comparison, considering Changsha's proximity to Liuyang, birthplace of fireworks and one of the world's biggest fireworks manufacturing centres.
But I made do with what was available up in Taiyuan, and that's all good, I had a bit of fun blowing things up and chasing Nian away that Spring Festival.