Those Crazy Germans Light up the Sky
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Beijing,
China
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Back to work for the last days of the Spring Festival...nothing to report, but after work on Wednesday...well, let's blame those crazy Germans. I am working in the International Broadcast Center, where an empty space about the size of 20 airplane hangars is being prepared to host the world's media covering the up coming Summer Olympic Games. Construction is going on all around, and amongst this building, a group of Germans and Chinese are putting telephone, internet, camera, audio and every other type of cable into the place. Much of the work they are doing is for me, so we have developed a friendship over the past month or so. Each day, a Chinese member of the cabling crew is dispatched to the local street vendor to buy us Chinese lunches, so I share lunch with these guys and girls all the time. Well on this Wednesday, I wasn't working in the IBC, I was at the office for some meetings and to go over some new responsibilities I will be taking over for the Olympic Venues...therefore I missed lunch. I got a call from the Crazy Germans, to say since I missed lunch so I had to buy the beer at our favorite little bar, the basement bar, the Metro that night. Sounds perfectly reasonable, doesn't it?
So after work I stop at the Metro and have a couple Carlsbergs with my English friend from the office. We have one...we have two...we have more. Where are the Germans? I give up on them start to head home, much later than I hoped to stay...probably around 10:30 pm or so. I take about a dozen steps out of the bar, and there are the Germans...in the middle of the street with huge 26 ounce beer cans, shooting off fireworks. They yell to me and one of the guys hands me a Heineken. More explosives bounce off nearby buildings. These are, as I explained earlier, full on "Fireworks Display" fireworks with multiple blooming explosions and huge cascading rainbows of light of all types. The display lasts about 4 minutes and everyone in the little group of Rhinelanders cheers and lifts their semi-filled beer cans. The moment is savored briefly before the next set of fireworks is ignited. For the first time I see how these things work. There is a wrapped box about the size of nice sized microwave oven which is covered with thin plastic wrap and on one side is a huge wick hanging out about 4 inches. The wick is lit, and the box does all the work. It dispenses these jaw-dropping booms and bangs one at a time, or in combinations, to create amazing displays. The wick takes about 2 seconds to do its work and the night sky lights up again. Great cheers again, as soon as the sky stops echoing. So now I am dispatched to buy more beer, and when I return I find more fireworks going up. The boys quickly exhaust their supply of gunpowder, but not the supply of beers.
It is decided that although it is now into the next day and the New Year celebration is now officially over, our fireworks show shouldn't end. We all throw in 100 yuan each, and our chief negotiator leaves to do his best to get us a favorable Sino-German cross-continental explosion treaty. You see, we figure it is the last night of Spring Festival....this stuff is going to warehouse in about 30 minutes, not to be sold again for a full year...maybe they might want to get rid of the remaining fireworks on hand.
Many beers later, our personal Henry Kissinger returns with many boxes stacked on boxes. He is overjoyed, "I got the big ones...136 items each!" There are 4 or 5 boxes... Here we go. The plan is given some incredible engineering study, about 10 seconds, and it is decided if we tie two fuses together we can have two shows at the same time. Um...okay, that sounds, um, not like the best plan to me, but....
The fuse is lit (or is it fuses). A pause and then the night is ablaze with incredible pinks, greens, blues, and stars, streaks, whiz bangs and huge mortar booms. The explosions are so close together that it is constant roar of noise. We stare into the sky, and I have this completely out of body experience when it all hits me. I'm standing in the middle of street in Beijing China, triggering as much as gunpowder as was used in the Spanish-American War, drinking Dutch beer with Germans, Greeks and Englishmen...how did I get here? I still don't know...
