Sunday marked the 15th day of the eight month of the lunar calendar and the last day of Spring Festival celebrations. It’s also the day to eat YUANXIAO, the sweet round glutinous rice dumplings and set off the last firecrackers. I spent the day very quietly – simply because a vicious Beijing flu was trying to ruin the day.
China Daily estimates about 410,000 boxes of fireworks were sold in Beijing, 71% more than last year. Considering the fireworks madness it all went well and relatively few serious accidents were reported.

According to Xinhua: 400,000,000 text messages (SMS) were sent by Beijingers on the eve of Chinese New Year (17 February). Or 5,800 per second. Nationwide, China Mobile and China Unicom estimated that Chinese people would send around 14 billion festival text messages during the seven-day Lunar New Year holiday. No finger injuries were reported.
Official statistics indicated that Chinese people sent 429.6 billion text messages through mobile phones in 2006, a daily average of up to 1.2 billion.
There were more than 460 million mobile phones subscribers in China at the end of 2006.
China’s railways transported 100 million passengers during the 25-day Festival rush. Just imagine if those people would grab their car instead like in the USA.