Just the other day I heard a sound of Chinese New Year that I never thought I would hear again – the sharp pop-pop-pops that were the unmistakable  sound of firecrackers. But that couldn’t be, because firecrackers were banned in the 1970s. What I heard instead was the pop of an electronic firecracker, and I’m surprised it was not thought up of earlier, after all, the intention of the firecracker was the create a loud sound that would scare evil spirits away.

For those of us fortunate enough to have lived through the time firecrackers were still legal, we would remember that it was not only sound of the firecracker, but also the smell of gunpowder as well as the shreds of red paper that were all that was left of the exploded stick. Jerome remembers:

Silence wasn’t of course something that Chinese New Year celebrations are associated with, and besides the familiar sounds for the pounding of drums and clash of cymbals, there was that once familiar sound of fire crackers going off in the night, something that faded with the complete ban on the firing of fire crackers soon after the Chinese New Year of 1972 due to the trail of death, injury and destruction they were inclined to leave (although we could still hear the sporadic crackling for some years following the ban as a few resisted what were seen as attempts to restrict a traditional practice). It was in fact the after effects of the firing of fire crackers that has given me my earliest memories of Chinese New Year, which would have been associated with the very first Chinese New Year I had after moving to Toa Payoh at the end of the 1960s. What I clearly remember is stepping out of the lift and seeing the sea of red, which was a ground coloured red by what was left behind from the previous night’s firing of crackers … that is the lasting impression that I would always have of Chinese New Years past.

You can read the rest of Jerome’s post here. Has anyone gotten an electronic firecracker this new year? Or does it not compare to the real firecrackers of old?