Week 3 - Lantern Day, Jinqiao

This was our personal fireworks display looking out our dining room window on the 21st floor.  Lantern Day is the 15th and last day of the Chinese New Year festival, and traditionally children carried paper lanterns with puzzles to solve on the side, but now is yet another excuse for huge fireworks to celebrate.   Lantern Day in the Year of the Ox was the night that Didi was born.

Week 2 - Spent fireworks, Jinqiao

We arrived back in Shanghai on the fourth day of the new year of the Rabbit, and on this night the Chinese set off fireworks to welcome the Fortune God.  I find this an incredible oxymoron, because fireworks are not given away cheaply, and effectively in order to welcome the Fortune Gods for the new year, they burn their existing money.  These are the remnants of a firework display that would have probably gone for about 8 mins with a series of loud bangs, pretty fireworks and some fire balls.

Week 1 - Surfers Paradise

At midnight on the eve of the Year of the Rabbit, a bit more than a thousand kilometres north of our holiday spot in Surfers Paradise, Cyclone Yasi hit the Queensland coast with ferocity.  The following morning we woke to clear blue skies and the news of the devastation of many towns, the only sign for us was the rough seas and coastal warnings at the beach.  Surfers Paradise continues to grow and skyscrapers along the coast are in abundance.  It will be interesting to compare this photo of Soul and the Hilton in a year, and see what is next in line for development.  It is also a question about whether these buildings would be able to withstand the impact of a cyclone themselves.

I wish you all the best for a Happy New Chinese Year - The year of the rabbit.  Zhu ni xinnian kuaile!!