The Crazy Chinese Birthday Candle

Hi, all. Today is Julia's birthday. She's sixteen :) She's happy because her cousin is here visiting, and they're having a ball. Today they went swimming in the river (again). Adam made a pound cake for her birthday with a light strawberry glaze and strawberries on the side.

So far, so good. Julia got a few fun gifts. Then Anna pulled out ... the Crazy Chinese Birthday Candle that she bought in China last summer. Yep -- she bought a big birthday candle in China, brought it to the U.S., and saved it until Julia's birthday today. It came in a box. "Happy Birthday!" it says. The rest of the text, however, including all the directions, were in Chinese.

It was the strangest-looking thing. We studied it, and studied the pictures on the box, quite carefully. We wondered exactly how to light it, and ... um ... exactly what would it DO after we did light it.

You're supposed to stick the candle into the cake, but because the cake already has a big hole in its middle, we had to stick the candle into the side.

Maybe we should've taken that as a warning ...
It looks kind of cute from above. Lots of little bitty candles. But that circle in the middle with the red dot ... it looks more like a firework.

And lo-and-behold, it was. It hissed and flamed and shot up toward the ceiling, and we all screamed. My niece captured it on video. Being the intrepid blogger that I am, I made sure to photograph the terror.

Yep, it really was a torch, no kidding. Anna snickered with delight. She admitted that the Chinese are really into birthdays, and kind of into pyrotechnics.
I'm not sure which is more annoying though: the flame-thrower moment at first, or the truly irritating high-pitched happy-birthday-song that the candle kept playing, over and over. It ran (and the little candles circled slowly like a carousel) for five or ten minutes.

Julia blew out the little circling candles, and I told Anna to take the contraption outside at last. I couldn't listen to the song One More Time. That was about two hours ago. It's still playing out there stuck into one of my front porch ferns. I'm sure the neighbors think we're nuts.