Last night was the Lantern Festival or yuanxiaojie (元宵节), the traditional end of the Chinese new year, a fortnight after the first day of the lunar calendar.
This is how Danwei celebrated: a string of ten thousand firecrackers, lit at both ends. It took almost exactly two minutes to self destruct.
By law, the fireworks should have stopped after midnight last night, but there are still plenty of bangs in the streets of Beijing today.