Asia rings in Year of the Sheep with fireworks, festivities

Fireworks illuminated the skies across China as millions around Asia ushered in the Year of the Sheep on Feb. 19, kicking off festivities with an annual televised gala that got a thumbs down on social media for heavy Communist Party propaganda.
      
Wednesday night, or Lunar New Year's eve, was marked by loud booms as people shot off firecrackers in various parts of the country, filling the air with the pungent smell of explosives.
      
Injuries involving fireworks in Beijing during the first hour of the New Year, however, declined 24 percent from last year as sales of the pyrotechnics dropped 34 percent, the official Xinhua news agency reported, citing local authorities.
      
But the detonations worsened Beijing's notoriously bad air with "heavy pollution" reported at midnight, Xinhua added.
      
Indoors, hundreds of millions of Chinese tuned in for the annual televised Spring Festival gala, which lasts for about four hours and is broadcast nationwide, featuring singing, dancing, skits and comedy performances.
      
Spring Festival, which sees Chinese pack flights, trains and automobiles to return to their hometowns for family reunions, is the Chinese name for the holidays.
      
Social media users, however, complained Thursday that the show was ruined by Communist Party sermons to root out corruption, which has been the pet policy of President Xi Jinping since he became head of the party and government.
      
The performance included comic dialogues criticising the endemic culture of bribe-taking.
      
"It was the most disgusting Spring Festival gala," read a post on microblog Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of Twitter. "It was just for the state leaders, not for common people."     ...