On the 8th of September last year I was on my way to Carrefour to fetch some shopping . The 8th of the month is a very auspicious day here in China.  As here the number 8, 八 (bā in pinyin) is consider to be very lucky, as it sounds very similar to the word for wealth  发〔發 in classical Chinese〕(fā in pinyin) the only difference in the sounds being whether you use your top lip or your top teeth to make the word.

The number 8 is considered to be so lucky that wealthy (and mad) Chinese will pay an absolute fortune for a number plate displaying all the eights.  The Beijing olympics were started on 8/8/2008 for exactly the same reason.

On the other hand, the number 4, 四 (sì) because it sounds very like the word for dead  死 (sǐ) , is considered to be very unlucky. Although, believe me, it is not the same, as the former pronounced “sur” has a falling tone and the latter again pronounced “sur” has a falling and then rising tone as indicated in the pinyin notation in brackets, and you have to listen very, very carefully to hear the difference. Note that Pinyin does not use an English pronunciation of its characters. (I don’t envy my daughter  her degree in Chinese by the way.) It is so unlucky that sometimes tower blocks have no 4th floor (and to hedge their bets, there might not be a floor 13, either).

Anyway as a sceptical westerner this fixation on superstition all seems a bit medieval and it was very surprising to me that a bank should consider that it should have a branch opening day based on such superstitions, but I suppose if the IOC were prepared to pander to Chinese superstition its not up to me to argue.  So it was that on my way to the supermarket I came across this bank branch opening ceremony that involved lots of red carpet, red balloons, a line-up of the employees on the edge of the wide pavement being given a team-building pep-talk and speeches from local top guys and finally some firecrackers.  Lots of firecrackers.  Lots of big firecrackers.

Note that this was last September, before the Shanghai local government brought in a total ban on the use of fireworks inside the outer ring road of Shanghai just before Chinese New Year as an anti-pollution measure (sic).  It could not have happened this September.

The firework ban led to a very different New Year than the one we enjoyed (?) when we first arrived in Shanghai when the fireworks went on for 8 days, creating such a big wall of sound that towards the midnight of New Year’s Eve it sounded as if a bullet train was shooting through the apartment as the sound ricocheted amongst the tower blocks.  I regret not having had the wit to record the sound then.  All I did was take a great number of photos of a few of the exploding rockets that burst forth at a rate of maybe 10 a minute over the 20 storey buildings around us, or the firecrackers in the street that were set off both before businesses closed for the holidays and as people returned to work.

I did however video some of the bank opening as I stood and watched the spectacle, as once they set off the firecrackers it was too good to miss.  To imagine the sound of Chinese New Year as it was in 2015, consider this noise a thousand-fold.

And for 2016 Chinese New Year absolute silence. The obedience following the ruling was truly amazing.