THERE was so much noise from the fireworks that at first people did not hear the sound of the approaching police sirens. But as the distant wailing became louder and flashing red lights appeared in the distance, there was sudden pandemonium.
A few seconds before, the street in the little town of Gengzhuang had been the scene of an extraordinary, chaotic, fireworks carnival. It was late on Thursday evening, the eve of the Lunar New Year, when people in China traditionally let off fireworks to frighten away evil spirits.
Because fireworks have recently been banned in Beijing, we had driven east about 25 kilometres from the capital to Gengzhuang, which we had been told was a designated area where people could see in the New Year in traditional, noisy, fashion.
And they were doing just that. The main street was a war zone. The night air was filled with the deafening bangs and reports of exploding fireworks.
Thunder flashes were being tossed around on the roadway - one exploded under a passing car - and coloured sparks showered down on us from overhead. A crackerjack was going off in an oil drum like a maddened percussion band. Screaming dervishes howled across the sky.
On nearby waste ground, young men could dimly be seen through smoke as thick as dry ice lighting strings of crackers which writhed on the ground spitting fire alike machineguns.
People were buying their fireworks from roadside stalls and from little trucks parked in front of shuttered stores on each side of the narrow street. But most of the vendors were apparently unlicensed.
At the sound of the police sirens, the sellers shouted warnings to each other. Middle aged women clasping huge armfuls of thunder flashes disappeared into the darkness. Men hastily threw tarpaulins over their trucks and drove them down unlit lane ways or on to waste ground.
The laden trestle table at which we had been browsing was lifted bodily by two women and carried into a cafe, with bundles of rockets falling off at the doorway.
As a convoy of three police vehicles came upon the scene, their headlights picked up the sight of three figures frantically pushing a lorry which wouldn't start, and of other vendors still trying to pack up their displays and vanish into the darkness.
It was just then, in the confusion and panic as the first police car was passing, that one of the last remaining fireworks stalls blew up.
There was a tremendous bang and a big flash of white light which sent people running in all directions, then dozens more rapid fire explosions. Bundles of unexploded fireworks were blown across the road or one seller the night had turned into disaster, though no one seemed to be hurt.
For some reason the police did not stop. They crawled past the scene, a dozen officers glaring menacingly from a white van in the middle of the convoy, then turned at the nearby entrance to the Beijing expressway, and drove slowly back along the street, sirens still wailing, before disappearing again in the direction from which they had come.
Immediately the merchants emerged from hiding. When we left Gengzhuang some time later, they were back in business and the night's fun was under way again.
At the expressway toll booth a guard pulled us over to make sure we were not smuggling fireworks into Beijing. During the holiday season extra police patrols were on the lookout for anyone trying to defy the ban. Having ascertained we were "clean", he wished everyone a happy new year and waved us on.
But despite the prohibition, as we drove home we could see and hear more fireworks being let off in the darkened city suburbs. In our neighbourhood, as midnight approached, the banging and crackling reached a steady climax which was sustained for a full hour, with fireworks exploding in alley ways and courtyards and rooftops, making the city sound like Beirut.
As this is a special year of celebration in China because of the return of Hong Kong, the authorities, like the police in Gengzhuang, possibly decided to let the night take its course and ignore a noisy display of waywardness and civil disobedience.
That is unusual in a society which is normally tightly controlled. But it wasn't political, which is what counts. And anyway there was evidently little they could do to enforce a ban on a festival tradition which has survived many dynasties and seems set to outlive the current one as well.