Hunan, I’ve been told, is China’s largest producer of fireworks.  China is the world’s ultimate consumer of fireworks.  This makes my new home a great place to play around with gunpowder in all its family-friendly variations.  The options available for purchase are mind boggling.  Whole blocks of Huaihua are devoted to the sale of fireworks.  Here is one of the store’s me and my English friend Ruth visited today:

Tomorrow is our Cameroonian friend’s birthday.  In China birthday’s are a perfect occasion for lighting off a few fireworks (as are funerals).  Everyday I hear the boom of some distant fireworks, it’s just a normal sound here in Hunan.  Just this morning I was woken at 7 AM by the sound of hundreds and hundreds of fire crackers being set off in my neighborhood.  I recently found out that fire crackers are technically not allowed to be set off in downtown Huaihua, whereas the large rockets with exploding balls in the sky are perfectly okay for a pubic sidewalk.  Tonight we will play with all types of fireworks and hopefully no one will maim themselves.  Here are some more photographs of the fireworks store, which sometimes felt more like a munitions depot. (Our purchase of fireworks is at the end of the post)

Here is our purchase.  This all cost just $10!