Spring Festival-Setting off Fireworks 1/2

People Use Fireworks to Cerebrate the New Year

Today I am going to talk about the most exciting part of the Spring Festival, the setting off of fireworks. When I was a little boy, setting off fireworks and receiving red envelopes were the best parts of the Spring Festival. People set off fireworks normally during the middle of the night after 12 midnight, symbolizing the coming of the New Year. At that moment, the skies of China’s cities are full of the flowers and the sounds formed by the fireworks. People like to show off by creating the biggest fireworks displays with the loudest sounds.

This tradition was recorded in Chinese history during the Han Dynasty  (206 BC-220 AD). The recording goes as follows: on the first day of the New Year, people got up from their beds with the first crows of the roosters and set fireworks in their own yards to ward off the ghosts. During that time, people didn’t have fireworks as advanced as we do now, nor did they have paper. Instead, people used fire to burn bamboo, which makes a very big cracking sound to word off the ghosts. Fireworks in Chinese are called “Bao Zhu”. Bao means exploding and Zhu means Bamboo. We still use the word “Bao Zhu” to describe fireworks today.

It is believed that paper was invented during the West Han Dynasty (202 BC-9AD) and the first fireworks were believed to be invented during the Song Dynasty (960 AD-1279 AD) on accident by Taoists who tried to temper elixir with fire. The Taoists found that when they combined sulfur, charcoal and lime nitrate it would begin to burn and explode. Soon after this people invented gunpowder. This made a much stronger sound when gunpowder was put in the hollow tubes of bamboo. During the Song Dynasty, ancient people would make fireworks with paper, which resulted in a loud cracking sound.