'09

Chinggis Khan looks down upon people lighting off chinese fireworks to celebrate a western holiday


I told my dad that there were some serious fireworks going off, and the first thing he said was "I can't imagine that Mongolians and fireworks mix well". He was painfully right.
I walked to Sukhbaatar square to see the New Year celebration. When I got there people were lighting off fireworks all over the place, big ones. Most of them were either rockets or small shells that fired out of tubes. The people had an odd way of launching the shells though. They would light the fuse then hold the tube, shaking it vigorously back and forth. There may have been a point to this shaking, but I doubt it. The effect it did have was that the tube would shoot off in random directions, depending on what point in the arc it was at. Quite often the shaking would catch the projectile as it left the tube, making it fall lazily back to the ground and explode joyously in the crowd. The crowd would gasp and scatter, long after the thing had exploded of course.
Picture of fireworks exploding in the crowd

Another time I saw a woman stick a rocket (a big one, more than an inch in diameter) into some snow and light the fuse. I was about five feet away at the time, and was somewhat concerned with how deep she had stuck the rocket. Sure enough, the thing failed to launch. I turned and ran as it sprayed the ground with sparks, then exploded, showering the back of my pants. Some people were about three feet away from it, but they seemed to be Ok.

One guy wasn't ok. One of the shells fell out of the tube and exploded in his arms. His face was fine, but his coat was singed and when I left some of his friends were helping him up off the ground. He looked dazed.

I left the square at midnight and began walking south, despite the fact that home is WSW of the square. I intended to get a taxi. Much to my surprise, the streets were practically empty. I walked on and on, but I still failed to find a taxi willing to stop. As I walked further the coal smoke began to get thicker and thicker, until it was thicker than I had imagined coal smoke could be. The buildings became silhouettes with neon lights, and the empty streets looked unfamiliar. All the streets in the center of the city are laid out on a grid, so I decided I would continue walking until I hit the street I knew would take me home.

The coal smoke grew thicker and thicker, until I could only see about 30 feet. I couldn't tell which street was which, or get a good idea of what the buildings were. Eventually I decided I had missed my street, and that I should go down one of the streets headed west until I found something I could identify. I walked on and on, not able to tell what was across the street, not being able to recognize the buildings I could see, and only occasionally seeing the fleeting figure out some other poor lunatic out at this odd hour.

I beginning to seriously debate whether or not I should head all the way back to the square and start over, when I saw the dimly flashing lights of the television broadcasting tour on the hill behind the language school. On a normal night these lights would have been visible from most of the city, but now I could hardly make them out. I headed toward the light, and as the ground slowly ascended the smoke cleared. I began to see the irregular and ramshackle fences of the ger community haashas across the street. I had missed my street, missed the street after it, and gone all the way to the edge of the city.

My ankle is sore.

Pretty lights I saw on the way there (not on the way back).