In the early postwar years, the explosion of fireworks and firecrackers
was a familiar sound in Hong Kong. (Fireworks are rockets, fiery rain,
etc. Firecrackers are just a bang or succession of bangs.) For Hong Kong
Chinese (and Chinese elsewhere), the object traditionally of setting off
crackers was to dispel evil spirits and thus pave the way for uninterrupted
success. It followed that crackers would usually be lit to celebrate the
opening of a new business, births and marriages, and any occasion that
was the beginning of a new enterprise. Chinese New Year was always a
time for non-stop banging day and night, sounding like a battlefield.
Not content with one or two individual bangs, a big opening could
conclude with the stringing together of a long line of crackers drooping
down from the end of a bamboo pole leaning at 45 degrees. When the
bottom cracker was lit, its explosion would set off the remainder one by
one climbing up the string. The ground would then be covered by pieces
of red paper (crackers were always coloured red, a lucky colour) and the
vicinity wreathed in acrid smoke. The bigger the opening and the more
opulent the organiser, the more necessary to demonstrate the fact
publicly.
As District Officer in the New Territories, I once attended the opening of a
new market on January 21, 1951 (I remember the date as my son was
born early on the morning on that day). The inevitable crackering
continued for a good 15 minutes. It was almost enough to cause posttraumatic
stress.
All this crackering was not without problems. In the hands of children,
crackers tended to be a game for making unsuspecting people jump. It
was commonplace for lighted crackers to be thrown from an upper
balcony on to any passing rickshaw below, to the consternation of the
passenger and the rickshaw puller. But by far the biggest problem were
frequent injuries to eyes and hands, likewise fires from carelessly lit
crackers and rockets. The situation became so serious that when In the
1960's I happened to be posted to the former Secretariat for Chinese
Affairs I convened a meeting of the Chief Officer, Fire Brigade, and staff of
the Medical and Health Department. They all agreed and pressed for the
Government to ban the possession and letting off of all fireworks and
firecrackers in Hong Kong. Their manufacture in Hong Kong was already
banned as too dangerous: the frequent explosions of fireworks factories in
nearby Macao indicated the extent of the clanger.
When I sent the meeting's conclusions to the Secretariat, I expected they
would have no chance of acceptance. It was more than likely that the
Secretariat would feel that a ban at this juncture might provoke violent
reaction. There had been riots (for other reasons) and there was always
the risk that Communist China (hostile in those days) might seize the
occasion as an excuse to provoke unrest. I guessed correctly. It was
several years before the Hong Kong Government felt the public was ready
to accept a ban, sweetened by an official annual fireworks display in the
harbour at Chinese New Year. So legally there are no more unauthorised
bangs in Hong Kong. (In practice, the odd bang may occur in the New
Territories where someone thinks he can get away with it undetected.)
A really big display came on June 30 and July 1, 1997 when Hong Kong
was handed over to the Chinese Government. On the first night, Hong
Kong put on a grand display of fireworks from vessels moored in the
harbour. This was a first class event of star bursts, fiery rain, rockets, etc,
giving rise to Cantonese exclamations of "Wah" from the crowds on either
side of the harbour. On the following night, there was an equally big, if
not bigger, fireworks display in the harbour, put on by the Chinese
Government (which owned Hong Kong from that day), enlivened by one
of the junks, from which the fireworks were lit, catching fire in a
spectacular burst of flame.
There is no indication that the ban has led to an increase in evil spirits in
Hong Kong.
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