Lunar New Years

This is the street that separated the chaos from where we spent the night (thankfully it was some distance away). So during the New Year, the Chinese tradition says (among many other things) that the New Year is actually a beast and will eat you if you don't follow certain cutoms such as blowing up tons of gunpowder (they definitely got that part down), clean your house to make room for the new (I would have licked the floors after they cleaned, it was incredible). Back to the fireworks, it was balistic. The whole night was a rain shower of firecrackers and these tube like things that just blew up (very grenade like).

The square was trashed, or I should say abused. There was so much smoke, debris, choatic activity going on that all we did was laugh. I mean, it's not every day you see the family affair to buy tons of fireworks and set them off in the still very busy street. "Firework" is literally translated to "smoke flower"...random fact of the day.
Needless to say, it was a fun exposure to the New Year, but the end of the New Year Firework show (yes it lasts 15 days) was unbelievable, that's soon to come though.