Fireworks- Every Day

Driving in from the airport, we transitioned from the highway to the local country road, and almost as immediately, next to my window were bright orange flashes and the loud drum roll of firecrackers.

I asked the obvious.  "Are those firecrackers?"

"Yes, don't you have those in America?" responded Miss Liu, an English teacher at the local middle school who had come with my friend, Fang Zhu, or "Aunt" Fang, to pick me up from the airport.

"Yes, but we don't set them off on the side of the road...in the middle of the afternoon."

I've heard fireworks of firecrackers every single day since I've been here.  I'm not exaggerating, so I don't mean most of the time.  I mean, every morning, before the construction workers begin their work, they supposedly chase the evil spirits away by lighting off a string in front of the work site, when people celebrate anything (wedding, birthday, acceptance to a good school) they set off firecrackers outside the restaurant, and when people feel like being entertained, I suppose, they light off firecrackers wherever or whenever they please.

Someone who was born in China explained the country this way: "There's no freedom of speech, but you can start a fire in the street."  I'm witness to the truth of that statement.  America has written and unwritten rules about certain spaces.  Streets are for cars, sidewalks are for people, you don't spit in a restaurant, you don't smoke in most places anymore, you need a permit to do any activity that would "disturb the peace."  I've never seen these boundaries in China.

When they light their firecrackers in the street, it's not just a packet of Black Cats, either.  It's the pinky-finger-sized red firecrackers that are on a string, and the whole roll covers about two parking spaces.  Then they let loose, and the strangest thing is that no one seems to really notice.  Chinese people take it for granted; firecrackers in the street are as mundane as seeing the mail truck in America.

Once, in my "Aunt's" apartment, she handed me a long stick with a long, thick tip.
"Is this incense?" I asked. No reply.
"In-cense?" I said, louder and slower.  She grabbed a lighter.
"Wait, is this a sparkler?" I asked exasperated.  She flicked the lighter a few times.
"Is this a sparkler- in the house?"  She finally got a flame.  "Is this a sparkler?" I asked again.
The paper fuse took some time, but eventually it caught and she laughed as I twirled the sparkler around a few times before it died.  A few weeks later, I think it was, she pulled a roll of firecrackers out of a drawer and we went out at night and lit them, in the street, just for fun.