Fireworks for fortune

Here’s a video of the fire­works in my area on CNY’s Eve and last night.

On the fifth night of Chinese New Year (count­ing from CNY’s Eve), peo­ple go pyro again and set of an­other bar­rage of fire­works and fire­crack­ers. They shoot fire­works every night but es­pe­cially the first and fifth nights.

Why the fifth night? You see, Tao gods come and visit who­ever sets off the biggest ex­plo­sions, and the fifth day is when the God of Fortune (yíngcáishén) comes over. People don’t care about the God of Health. The God of Health is a stiff and tells peo­ple not to play with fireworks.

I made a mis­take in a pre­vi­ous post. I said peo­ple in China cel­e­brate Chinese New Year for 10 days and don’t work dur­ing those 10 days. They ac­tu­ally cel­e­brate for 15 days, and start their time off from the day be­fore Chinese New Year un­til the eighth day of the lu­nar year. So it’s ac­tu­ally nine days if you count week­ends, but it also varies by employers.