Year of the Dog Is Ushered In With a Whimper : China: Citizens used firecrackers for 1,000 years to celebrate the New Year with a bang. Officials now say that’s too dangerous.

Every year for at least 1,000 years, dating from the discovery of gunpowder in the Sung Dynasty, the Chinese greeted their New Year with a deafening roar of firecrackers, the bigger and louder the better.

In economic boom times like those of recent years, the streets of the towns and cities were ankle deep in the red wrappers of spent firecrackers, some the size of soup cans, by the next morning. In the afterglow of such explosive evenings, a sulfurous haze blanketed the streets.

But at midnight Wednesday in Beijing, the Year of the Dog came in with a whimper, not a bang. Only a few stray detonations punctuated the still night. Even the politically rebellious university district in the capital’s northwest corner was quiet except for distant rumblings from suburbs outside the Beijing district.

Disturbed by what they claimed was an alarming number of injuries in past celebrations, many major cities banned firecrackers this year. But the ban was not universal.

In Shanghai, the neon-lit main street, Nanjing Road, was a cacophony of revelry and minor explosions. Officials in the freewheeling business capital refused to go along with the prohibition.

In stark contrast, it was an eerie, nearly silent night Wednesday in Beijing.

Officials attempted to compensate for the absence of pyrotechnics by staging lavish television specials and festive street shows, some performed by costumed People’s Liberation Army troops.

To emphasize the public safety aspect of the firecracker ban, Beijing Television Network aired a program that featured interviews with ophthalmologists and people blinded or maimed by fireworks accidents. One segment focused on a 10-year-old boy who lost four fingers in a firecracker explosion.

“Please don’t take my picture until my fingers grow back,” the boy begged the camera operator.

The Beijing Evening News newspaper published a glowing article about Dong Shuchen, an elderly woman who voluntarily handed over to the Zhanlanlu police firecrackers she had purchased to celebrate her son’s marriage during the three-day Spring Festival holiday, as the New Year is known here, that begins today.

Historically, many Chinese believed that the staccato explosions of fireworks frightened off ghosts and evil spirits.

Firecrackers are traditional at nearly every festive or auspicious occasion, and for the Chinese New Year, families traditionally spent the equivalent of $20 on them. But the newspaper said Dong gladly abandoned tradition for civil responsibility.

“My family should take the lead in obeying the regulation,” the newspaper quoted her as saying. “We will be just as happy at my son’s wedding ceremony. I felt good about handing over the firecrackers.”

Shopkeepers attempted to put a brave face on the money lost from the firecracker ban.

Fu Gongshen, manager of the Chaoyan Yuanfan Sundry Goods store in East Beijing, said his business dropped $10,000 because of the ban.

But he said he was glad to be relieved of the worry that one of the firecrackers he sold might injure a customer.

“Last year I was sitting on the edge of a volcano of worry,” he said. “This year I am happy to take the economic loss in exchange for the social benefits.”

Not everyone, of course, was happy about the ban.

Two boys, their faces covered with sticky sugar from the candied apples they were munching, watched with bored expressions as army acrobats performed at the Chaoyan District New Year’s show staged by local officials to make up for the missing fireworks.

The two boys, ages 13 and 14, reckoned that they would watch television and play video games instead of igniting firecrackers.

But in the mind of the elder boy, a plump child with a mischievous look, the ban was a real shame.

“We really liked firecrackers,” he said. “It’s colorful, and you can really make a lot of noise.”