AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE FIRST FIREWORK
TIAN WEI (villager)
I have a confession, I wasn’t trying to change history, I was just trying to get people to come to my summer party. See, I wanted to throw a banger. My neighbor, Zhao Feng always does it up. His lantern festivals are EPIC! Floating lights. Koi ice sculptures. Live zither band. People are always talking about his jasmine dumplings. Meanwhile, the only person who shows up to my party is my cousin Bing, and I think that’s just because he feels guilty for killing one of my goats. So I was like, I need to do something different, epic, I have to blow their minds, and that’s when I realized, “FIRE!”
LI HUA (village gossip)
We all knew Wei was gonna do something dumb. He kept saying stuff like, “I’m gonna disrupt the sky.” Like… bro. The sky doesn’t need you. Sit down.
MASTER KONG (local alchemist)
Wei comes to me like, “Yo, what if we mix the good black powder with bamboo?” And I go, “That’s what we use to scare ghosts.”
And he goes, “ Sky Ghosts?”
and I’m like, WHAT?!”
TIAN WEI
I thought it’d just go pop. You know? A little boom, a flash, maybe summon a cloud dragon if we’re lucky.
But it turns out if you jam too much powder into a dry bamboo shoot and point it at a tree… it becomes a missile. That’s on me. No cap.
CHEN MING (Wei’s Friend)
Wei is always trying stupid shit. Last month, he tried to make soup with fermented fish sauce and nearly poisoned half the village.
So when I saw him grinding up chemicals, I was like, let me pack my ox and get the F out of Dongzhou.
SUN YI (eyewitness)
When I saw it, Low-key? I thought it was the end times. It was like the moon fell sideways. Bright light. Loud crack. Whole forest was eaten by hell.
MASTER HUANG (village elder)
I was on my afternoon walk when I heard this ungodly sound.
Like the gods themselves were tearing open the sky.
BOOM. Birds gone. My knees buckled. I thought the Mongols were back.
CHEN MING
Wei goes flying backward, lands in a pile of cabbages.
The bamboo tube shoots up in the air like a rocket and then—and this is the wild part—it starts sparkling. Like the Stars were dancing.
LI HUA
I remember he screamed, “ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!”
Then the tree exploded and his finger flew into my tea.
Deadass.
TIAN WEI
Yeah. Lost the pinky.
I thought I was dead. Seriously. I’m lying there, covered in cabbage leaves, ears ringing, and my first thought is, “Well, Zhao is going to have a field day with this one.”
But then I saw those golden sparks falling, and I was like, “Wait… did I just drop a W?”
XIAO MEI (merchant)
From my shop, it looked like the sky was dancing. My daughter ran outside and started clapping. I thought she was total Delulu. But iut was like the sky blinked.
LI HUA
The whole village came running. Some people thought it was divine. It was kind of… poetic? Ew. Don’t tell anyone I said that.
MASTER HUANG
I’ll admit, my first instinct was to have Wei arrested. Playing with fire? In this wooden village?
But then I saw everyone’s faces—pure joy.
TIAN WEI
I tried to recreate it that same day. Same mix. Same bamboo.
Lit the fuse—yes, I figured out I needed a fuse—and… nothing. Just a fart of smoke.
CHEN MING
Three weeks of random booms. Chickens stopped laying eggs. Mrs. Zhang’s cow gave sour milk.
Wei was obsessed.
SUN YI
I still hear the bamboo scream when I close my eyes.
XIAO MEI
Word spread fast. People started coming from other villages to see the “fire flowers.”
Wei would light them off at sunset, and the whole village would gather. Couples holding hands, kids screaming. Artists frantically painting images. It was… a vibe.
MASTER HUANG
Eventually the magistrate came. Wanted to confiscate Wei’s “dangerous materials.”
But half the village came to his defense. Said he was bringing joy to the people.
LI HUA
He’s both a cautionary tale and an inspiration. Which is extremely confusing for the children.
TIAN WEI
Now every New Year, every wedding, every festival—there are fire flowers in the sky because of me.
MASTER KONG
They say fireworks were invented to celebrate peace. No. They were invented because Wei had no friends and too much access to sulfur.
SEE YOU IN THE PNW NEXT WEEK
"I'm gonna disrupt the sky"