Diplomacy and fireworks

“They are just so sensitive about their culture,” says the Western teacher from Ohio.
“They asked me what I did for Spring Festival (the two-week-long Chinese New Year), and I told them I was in Panjin when the fireworks started. I was. They started around 9, 10 at night, and they went on all night. I mean all night. They started at one part of the city and soon enough the fireworks were coming from all directions. It was around the clock,” he says. “My students looked at me with big smiles, nodding their heads. ‘Yeah! Yeah!’ they said.”
“Fireworks all night? Must have made it difficult to sleep,” I say, imagining the loud booms, the cracks, the bams, the sizzles.
I quickly recall thinking it silly that the Chinese light fireworks in the middle of the day, despite the fact they cannot see the sky art. But they don’t care. They do it for simple reason: because they can. They do it because they like the sound. It’s almost a daily occurrence to hear firecrackers. On my first nights here I was transfixed by the glow of ephemeral light against the myriad windows of the identical rows of residential mid-rises surrounding me. The colors illuminate the windows, which already seem phosphorescent to me because each unit bears seemingly different colored lights for each room. Looking at the residences was like looking at an art installation of light, like a painter had placed his palette on vertical glass and sprinkled luminary spices on it from the heavens. The echoes through the rows and rows of buildings added an aural background, rounding out the experience as percussion rounds out an acoustic band.
“Well, I don’t remember sleeping badly, but I did have a helluva headache the next day, and the air was awful. All the sulfur from the fireworks was just so thick,” says the Ohioan, his ice blue eyes like another color from the fireworks spectrum. “But when I told my students that I thought they were going to cry. Their faces just sunk like they were crestfallen. They were so sensitive because I had indicated anything other than some sort of jubilant excitement over the fireworks.”
The Chinese, as we Westerners vaguely know, have many symbols of luck and prosperity. One of them is the dragon. I’ve read in numerous places that the Chinese use fireworks to awaken a mythological dragon who flies across the sky to make it cry, therefore commencing spring and its rains for this highly agricultural culture. The noise of firecrackers wards off evil spirits (if not a few Western spirits), too.
The Chinese are indeed sensitive about their culture. I’ve witnessed what the Ohioan meant. But then again, when someone comes to your country and doesn’t praise one of its customs, you’d be a bit miffed to, eh? You can always follow American’s Republican stance: If you don’t like it, get out.
The Ohioan is a tolerant, open-minded guy with lots of life experience. So don’t assume that he was being an arrogant American. Let his experience serve as an example that in some places even diplomacy doesn’t rate compared to faux praise.