Spring Festival fireworks

The Spring Festival– or lunar New Year–in China took place a week after I got to Beijing.  By far the highlight was watching the fireworks:

A couple things to keep in mind:

• These are set of by everday people, not a publicly sponsored presentation
• The fireworks were being set off from just about everywhere as far as the eye could see
• When you’re down on the street walking around it sounds like a war zone
• This clip is the couple minutes surrounding midnight, which was the peak
• This is from the window in my apartment in Chaoyang district looking north