Firework vendors had a hard time this year due to fierce competition

At 3:17 pm on February 28, there were still no customers at the fireworks and firecrackers stall beside the entrance to the Xinhualian Residential District. Sitting in the stall, the stall keeper Guo Wei could do nothing but watching the people passing by. There was still over 20,000 yuan of fireworks left in his 2 stalls, 3 or 4 times as much as at the same time last year.

"It was hard to do the fireworks business this year." Guo told the reporter that he had sold fireworks for the Spring Festival the past four years in the stall beside the Xinhualian Residential District, and this year saw the worst sales. From January 5 till the 14th (on the Chinese lunar calendar), he only sold a little more than an average of 1,000 yuan worth of fireworks per day. On the worst day, he only sold 200 yuan worth of fireworks, and even on the morning of the Lantern Festival, he sold only 2,000 yuan worth.

Even so, Guo's stalls sold more fireworks than other stalls that were farther from residential districts. In fact, the amount of fireworks consumed in 2010 in the residential district was higher than in 2009, but the number of fireworks stalls also increased. Therefore, the number of customers of each saw was reduced. In addition, the high prices also "scared" many customers away. "When people come to buy fireworks, they always ask the prices of the new varieties first, but the prices of the new varieties in 2010 were quite high. For example, the price of the "Fire Curtain" was about 1,000 yuan. As soon as I said the price, a lot of customers declined immediately, and they did not even ask the prices of other varieties." Guo also noticed that a lot of fireworks set off in the residential district were illegal fireworks bought in Hebei province which could be purchased for about one third or one fourth the price of fireworks sold in Beijing.

When the reporter asked Guo whether he hoped the exclusive fireworks suppliers would lower the price of fireworks in 2011, Guo sighed and changed the topic, saying that the fireworks provided by Beijing's exclusive fireworks suppliers are actually safer. On the evening of January 14 (on the Chinese lunar calendar), when a resident was lighting a firework, the firework exploded before it left the ground, nearly causing a severe accident. But the fireworks he sold had never had this kind of "explosive" accident.