Lunar New Year 2010 – An Explosive Tale of Two Cities

Beijing / Hong Kong – One Country, Two Styles. Fireworks are once again key to welcoming in the Lunar New Year. In Hong Kong, tens of thousands gathered peaceably to watch a high-tech pyrotechnic display set to music light up its famous harbour. In the capital, Beiing, things were a little more exuberant …

BEIJING

Recorded and Edited by Nini Suet

BEIJING locals regard fireworks as an essential celebratory activity, believing in their power to wash away bad luck and inauspicious spirits.

The explosive celebration is not without downsides. The smoke and the resulting debris causes severe pollution; fireworks kill and maim people and cause considerable damage.

According to state media, 20 people died in southern China’s Guangdong province this February from fireworks accidents, casting a tragic shadow on the holiday season.

Due to the hazardous nature of firecrackers, many urban cities in mainland China banned the activity in the 1990s. However, as a result of strong civilian defiance, Beijing erased its 12-year-ban on fireworks in 2006, and other major cities followed suit.

When the government relaxed the ban on fireworks in most areas during key festivals, it passed regulations to monitor the production, sale and transportation of firecrackers — but there are few controls on letting them off.

HONG KONG

Narrated by Lise Dalmeijer

HONG KONG banned fireworks following riots in 1967 when the violence of the Cultural Revolution spilled across the border into the then British colony.

During the short-lived turmoil, rioters set more than 8,000 home-made bombs, a number of them manufactured from the gunpowder in firecrackers.

The ban was partially lifted in 1982 when the trading house, Jardine Matheson, celebrated its 150th anniversary by sponsoring a fireworks display event over Hong Kong’s harbour to ring in the Chinese New Year.

Since then, large-scale fireworks displays have lit up the harbour every Lunar New Year. The displays are sponsored by private corporations.

The ban on private individuals setting off fireworks remains in place but is widely flouted in many of the villages of the New Territories and Outlying Islands.

The penalties are severe — the offence can attract a fine of up to HK$25,000 — but prosecutions are rare.

Comments in the video by Emesa Lee, 25, and Ivan Hu, 27, both students.