TOPIC:
The debate on whether fireworks should be banned has been raging in China for decades. Should China impose the ban on fireworks during the Spring Festival?
Chinese people traditionally light firecrackers and fireworks during the Lunar New Year, which usually falls in January or February, hoping the noise will fend off evil spirits and bad luck. However, with regular bouts of smog hitting China in recent years, fireworks' contribution to air pollution has drawn attention from the public and authorities.
Many people said on microblogs that the tradition should be cherished as their right. Their opinion is simple but reasonable. First, as one of the ancient Chinese customs, lighting fireworks has already become a part of Chinese culture. We light fireworks to celebrate happy occasions, not only during Spring Festival, but also at wedding, or opening ceremony of a business. The tradition should be preserved. Secondly, firecrackers bring great fun to both children and adults and even make the Spring Festival more colorful. Undoubtedly, a ban would put a damper on happy occasions.
However, firecrackers nowadays have caused a great number of problems which led to serious losses. From my perspective, although setting off firecrackers is a tradition since the ancient time, we should ban firecrackers, especially in the
modern city.
Setting off firecrackers will give rise to a series of environmental problems. Take this seriously. I know this has the makings of a platitude but the situation, in fact, is getting worse and worse. When firecrackers are burning, different kinds of poisonous gases will be released into the city, which causes air pollution. For instance, the firework spree during last year's Lunar New Year led to a surge in the PM 2.5 reading, which measures hazardous fine particles, to 500 micrograms per cubic meter on Lunar New Year's Eve. If we don’t take actions to ban the fireworks right now, our sky, which has already been polluted by industries, will soon turn into dark haze and nerve ever have a second chance.
Also, view in economic terms, setting off firecrackers is a great waste of money. Large sum of money turns into ashes in a crash and flash. What’s more, the city, of course, has to spend a lot of money and manual labor to relieve the pressure of the pollution caused by fireworks. It is difficult for the city to solve these problems fast enough to catch up with the speed of the pollution. To ask you a question, did you deal with the rubbish when firecrackers are burned to the ground, every time? Every day during the festival, the city needs to dispose of hundreds of thousands of tons of garbage. As a result, it has to spend extra money to employ more people. But who? Frankly speaking, no one is willing to work during the festival in the cold weather.
At last, I want to show you some figures. According to the Ministry of Public Security, there were more than 11,000 fires during the holiday, killing 40 lives, leaving 37 injured and causing damage of more than 56 million yuan (US$10.8 million). Most of these blazes were attributed to fireworks. The figure does not include a firecracker-triggered blaze that engulfed a five-star hotel in Shenyang, on February 3, causing 3 billion yuan in damage. Clearly, lighting fireworks did do serious harm on our society.
In general, I think it is necessary to ban fireworks in the city. Consumers should refrain from celebration with fireworks or only use environmentally friendly products to avoid \salt into the wound\