It's begun

It's the strangest thing, you walk around a corner and see a row of firecrackers giving off sparks and smoke but spy neither attendant nor spectator.

When the sun went down the fireworks really began, and now the sky's getting barbequed red-orange-copper.

One must be safe. Jeff Orcutt last year got hit square in the forehead by a bottle rocket (that's him to the right). This year I will advise him to take the "best defense is a good offense" strategy. Those at Sanlitun at about 1:30 a.m. should take cover.

I would live-blog this monumental night -- getting more monumental by the minute, by the way -- but I'll be partaking in the festivities. Will dump all my thoughts tomorrow.

Here's what I wrote last year.

*

Alicia says Hong Kong puts on the best fire show every year. Twenty-five minutes, apparently. "There's no comparison to that one," she says.

She's in for a real treat tonight from about 11:30 p.m. (or earlier) to 12:30 a.m.

Mainland China's Chinese New Year is a celebration of what it feels like to be alive. It is a collective, eruptive imposition of human will, a reckless, mindless solicitation to gods or whatever you want to call them, a reminder to everyone and everything that we exist and that, for two or three hours at least, we are the sole proprietors of our lives, and look, here's proof -- sound and our fury.