ABSTRACT
The nine-day Spring Festival in China took up a good portion of the Lunar New Year, which actually ran 21 days from late January to mid-February, depending on the alignment of the planets, or requisites of the incendiaries industry, or something. Anyway, fireworks were in order, fireworks continued throughout this entire period, and somebody was getting exceedingly rich! This now global mega-event known as Chinese New Year’s, locally called Spring Festival, and earlier downplayed as a “family affair” by my now absent students (thus avoiding blame), could best be described as a Spectacle of Scale. Picture a typical urban American Fourth of July celebration. The city cordoned off a park, the people came and brought blankets and picnic baskets, waited until dark, and bam, bam, wham—fireworks. A good thirty minutes or so. Then you went home.
