”Caaaareful...!”
I got this picture from…I forget where.
It’s an old Chinese New Year tradition: setting off fireworks to “scare off evil spirits and drive away bad luck”. It’s apparently also a really good way to destroy the stuff you own and drive away your ability to see ever again. China’s official Xinhua News Agency said that 125 people in Beijing were injured during celebrations, mainly because of the crappy quality of fireworks that had been flooding into the city in the months leading up to the celebration. Forty-four of the injured people admitted to Beijing’s Tongren Hospital had eye injuries. Forty-four! That’s seriously bad quality, if THAT many people have been injured. And there were 114 accidental fires in the city, as well. And that’s all just one city. It’s probably gonna be a pretty big death toll nation wide. Last year, 63 people died in fires related to the celebration, and I’m sure hundreds more were injured. I’m betting this year will be worse.
Now I love Chinese culture and all, but doesn’t it seem a little silly that an “evil spirit” is expected to be scared by firecrackers?! I mean, ok, if I were an evil spirit powerful enough to be invisible and harm people in the physical realm, there’s no way some firecrackers would scare me off. I’d be more likely to, say…make them backfire, thus injuring 125 people in a city. Not that that’s what happened…it’s a simple case of manufacturers cutting as many corners as possible to make as much money as possible while blowing up as many eyeballs as possible. And how the heck would firecrackers ward off bad luck, if there even were such a thing? And if bad luck DID exist, and firecrackers warded it off once, wouldn’t they ward it off all year? If so, nobody would ever have anything bad happen to them if they just blew up some firecrackers daily. How lame is that superstition? I feel bad for the people that were injured or lost property in the fires, but please, people!  Use your brains and stop believing things just because your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather did!
Link to article.