'Poor man's fireworks'

[Randy W]

Wall Street Journal's China RealTime

Watch: Dazzling Poor Man’s Fireworks in a Chinese Steel City

Quote

Poor blacksmiths in the town of Nuanquan, in Hebei’s Yu county, found that if they hurled molten iron at the old city wall, it exploded in a shower of sparks in the cold night air. They donned sheepskins and straw hats to protect themselves, and used spoons made of hard willow wood to hurl the iron.

The practice, which produced showers of sparks like a leafy tree canopy, came to be known as dashuhua (, which roughly translates as “throwing tree fireworks.”

While the rich bought expensive fireworks and firecrackers for the Lunar New Year, the poor pooled scrap iron to give the blacksmiths, and the performance became the centrepiece of the community’s celebrations.

Edited January 3, 2021 by Randy W (see edit history)