No 4th of July

Well National Day in China is certainly no 4th of July. If it wasn't for the fact that there was no school it would feel exactly like any other day, and given how little school I've taught it sort of does. There were at least some fireworks tonight, though to be fair they have fireworks if they open a 7-11 so I can't be sure those had anything to do with the holiday. The biggest display of fireworks I saw was right in the frost of the hotel, but those were for a wedding. There must have been a wedding reception in the hotel because at about 3 pm there was a limo and two big buses pulling up and they started setting of a ton of little fireworks outside the hotel. They may have been more impressive if it wasn't the middle of the day since you could barely see them. They didn't get all that high either since I was about on eye level with them on the 14th floor. What they did do was create a ton of noise. It sounded sort of like some one had built a shooting range right in front of the hotel. I looked out my window, which faces the back to see what all the fuss was about. Despite the loud noises not one of the students I saw walking around even looked in the general direction of the noise. I guess that fireworks are so common in China that it's not even really worth looking at when it happens right in front of you. National Day seems to be basically a nothing holiday that's only notable for getting time off. The amount of extra celebration for the lunar festival, which only gave one day off, was ten times greater. I know form reading about it that there is at least some celebration of National Day in Beijing, but for a country that is in many ways as fiercely patriotic and proud of itself as China it just strikes me as strange that this holiday isn't a lot bigger.