The travels of Justin

On almost every street corner is a small bomb table, perhaps better described as a wide selection of fireworks for sale. These are out on the street and they’re stacked a good 12-feet high. We grabbed a basket (how convenient) and started picking out explosives for the New Year celebration. The registered safty expert (he had a PRC government issued badge and everything) was a very energetic guy and real salesman. He’s pick some fireworks off the shelf and describe its effects with big hand gestures. To get us excited, he thrusted some 3-foot long stick into my hand and another guy leads me into the street. He lit the wick with his cigarette and suddenly I realize I’m in the middle of a busy intersection shooting roman candles over the passing cars, cyclists, and pedestrians. They demonstrated several firecrackers for us right there on the street. Cyclists just kept moving occassionally ducking their heads.

Suffice it to say, we came back to the dorm with all kinds of goodies.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 at 3:54 pm and is filed under Tianjin, China. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.