The beginning of the end...

I was woken this morning at 6.45am with what I thought was the sound of the building opposite me collapsing. With lots of earthquakes in the news recently (plus shoddy Chinese building techniques) it didn't seem all that unlikely. However, a minute later I realised that it doesn't take that long for a building to collapse so got up to investigate. Through the grey light of dawn, I realised that it was simply the beginning of the end - of Chinese New Year, that is! Today is Yuan Xiao Jie, the festival that marks the end of the Chinese New Year, which began a fortnight ago. Not every one of those days is a special celebration - but today seems to be, judging by the amounts of fireworks and firecrackers let off at ungodly hours!
After my early morning awakening, the noise has been non-stop. I feel like I'm living in a war zone. And it's not just one event at a time either. Everyone has fireworks and everyone lets them off whenever it suits so you can have a dozen or more firework displays going off in the same street at the same time. There are the deep booms of the ones that light up the sky, which sound like cannons going off. Then there are the piles of firecrackers that sound like mini-machine guns and can last anything from 30 seconds to a few minutes. And finally, there are the individual bangs - the ones that teenagers throw on the ground to frighten silly foreigners and sound like the crack of a rifle. A war zone indeed!
Today is also a special dumpling (yuan xiao) day and the streets are filled with sellers of little plastic bags of them. They look exactly like the little white toffee bonbon sweets I had as a kid. Apparently they're sweet inside (rice with bean curd or sesame usually) but I haven't tasted them yet. Sadly I missed most of the New Year celebrations as I've been back home in Scotland for a few weeks, but here are a few pics of the gorgeous lanterns for sale in the streets of Danfeng.