From what I had heard, one was to expect to feel like you were hunkered down in a bomb shelter waiting for the blitzkrieg to end….. Not far off! The festivities began early afternoon with fireworks being shot off at regular intervals (yes, I know you can’t see them during the day…. But people were doing it anyways). We had a few friends over and watched out over the golf course behind our apartment as the sun went down and the real show began! Our building shook with the proximity of blasts and eventually there was no pause between constant flashes and kabooms. We had bought a box of fireworks (that would rival any small town’s city fireworks display) for $20 USD and at about 11:45 went out front to set off our tiny display…
When we got to the front of our complex we could barely walk by the guard shack… All the guards were there with probably 40 boxes of fireworks, not nearly as puny as our miserable one. They were frantically wiring them all together to a master control box that would shoot them off in sequence. Not too shabby! So we handed them our box to add into the array and stood back waiting for the show.
It began with these ropes of poppers that sounded like we were being attacked with machine guns… and were very nearly were, as we were standing right next to them when they began going off!!! I’m still partially deaf in my right ear! Then the real show began….
We moved to the safety of the dry grass field (hahaha) a few meters away to see the big explosions go off. They were absolutely amazing! Beautiful, big, colorful, loud, and totally unsafe…. But hey! This is china!! Mei Wen Ti!
Now I should probably give you a little geography lesson… no, I am pretty sure if you are reading this you know where China is… I mean a geography lesson of our apartment complex in relation to other buildings. We live on one of the major street in our town, TEDA, Second Avenue. Our guard shack sits back about 100 feet from the street and then twice again back from there the apartments begin. We live furthest away all the way to the left from the guard shack. But… directly next to the guard shack, on second avenue is a new high-rise, still under construction. They are probably up to the 17 or 18th floor in the construction at this point, and the entire top is wrapped in scaffolding and some type of fabric to catch debris…. Or I guess I should say was wrapped…..
Halfway through the amazing fireworks display put on by the Warner Gardens Guards the wrapping caught fire…. Not a huge fire, but a steady smolder. New Years Eve just got a little more exciting! At this point my fingers and toes were icicles, but who could leave such a show????
Not to be dissuaded, the guards quickly grabbed as many boxes of fireworks as they could and ran into second avenue, one of the main streets in town, and began setting them off…. While we waited for a fire truck to arrive.
The first truck was too small and ill equipped to put out the fire, so reinforcements were called in….. And then more reinforcements. This had become what we call back home a “3 Alarm Fire” !!! Luckily the last truck was a ladder truck. They parked it on Second Avenue and began setting the supports to be able to raise the ladder up, the Bronto Lift. Aaryn and all the guys we were with said in unison…. They parked way too far away, it’ll never reach! And…. They were right. But it got darn close! Rather than move the truck and try again, they decided to send men into the building with fire extinguishers….. You heard me right. These men ran up the stairs and in a matter of 7 minutes had all the fire out. Why didn’t we do that first? Too obvious…..
Welcome to the Year of the Tiger!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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