It is the New Year here again, and again I found myself on the roof at midnight, watching the sky explode with light and color and thunderous sound. I'm pretty sure I was giggling like a child, though I couldn't hear my own voice. I'm pretty sure I was squealing like I used to do on speedboat rides with my Uncle Tom. Daniel, who slept through it last year, just smiled broadly in the dark, looking from one part of the skyline to the other, taking in the sight of it and trying to remember to breathe. According to Bright's homeschool curriculum, gunpowder was invented here. They certainly know how to use it! The following video doesn't do it justice.
The next morning, New Year's Day, we ventured out on our his-and-hers dian dong che (electric motorbikes) to join the festivities. Green Lake Park, the city's gathering place, was too thick with crowds of people and flocks of white birds to even get through the front gate, though I did take a picture of it.
Here is the cotton candy guy who spins delicious, colorless cotton candy by pedaling the wheel of his bicycle. Those white blobs are not not balloons. That's the candy! The guy in the second picture is pushing a huge cart of water chestnuts.
