Firecracker for the New Year 2006 (#9; Topic: I)

This morning, New Year's Day 2006, awakened by NPR's world report at 7 am, I heard reporters on how revelers around the world greeted the new year -- in Moscow, in New York City, in Chicago, and in other cities in the USA. The common ingredient in all these and other gatherings, it seems, is firecrackers. Last night, over CNN (its 10 pm segment was anchored by Carol Lin, one of my wife's cousins), I was similarly impressed by the colorful role firecrackers play on festive occasions. Indeed, gunpowder, a key ingredient of firecrackers, is a Chinese invention. In China, gunpowder was initially used solely for that purpose. However, to the western mind, which somehow can think more creatively -- "outside of the box" -- though, in the present context, the word perversely comes readily to mind -- gunpowder became the ingredient for gunboats. In one of my musings yesterday, I mentioned that, over the last century or two, China was longing to learn western methodology in science and, perhaps, on how, in western hands, gunpowder became gunboats to humiliate China until the middle of last century.
Posted at 11:54 am, Sunday, January 1, 2006