After two weeks of "constant war" it is finally over! Thursday February 21th was the last day it was allowed to use fireworks inside the fifth ring road of Beijing and this night was almost as another New Years Eve with enormous number of crackers again. This night is the Lantern Festival (Yuanxiao Jie), the last night of Spring Festival, celebrated with tangyuan (sweet glutinous rice balls in soup), family dinner and, you guessed it, firework.
Tangyuan
After midnight it was a strange silence we not heard for several week and we could once again sleep a whole night. The stand selling firecrackers on the street below or windows was demounted in the night and gone next morning - hope not to see You again next year....
Aside from feasting, Beijingers were also busy sending off text messages to friends and family on Spring Festival eve. The official numbers haven't been announced yet, but China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) was forecasting that across the country more than 17 billion Spring Festival greeting messages would be sent via mobile phone over the holiday season. In Beijing alone 600 million text messages were sent on Chuxi (Spring Festival Eve), which works out at close to 38 texts per person.
