Dashuhua is a 500 year-old tradition practiced by blacksmiths in the Chinese village Nuanquan, in which molten iron is thrown against a city wall, resulting in a beautiful show of sparkling lights.

The tradition started when blacksmiths found the sparks to be beautiful and to be a good alternative for the city's poor families who couldn't afford fireworks and firecrackers, but instead could contribute with scrap iron.

Filmmaker and journalist Max Duncan writes:

Poor blacksmiths in the town of Nuanquan, in Hebei's Yu county, found that if they hurled molten iron at the old city wall, it exploded in a shower of sparks in the cold night air. They donned sheepskins and straw hats to protect themselves, and used spoons made of hard willow wood to hurl the iron.

The practice, which produced showers of sparks like a leafy tree canopy, came to be known as dashuhua (打树花), which roughly translates as "throwing tree fireworks."

While the rich bought expensive fireworks and firecrackers for the Lunar New Year, the poor pooled scrap iron to give the blacksmiths, and the performance became the centrepiece of the community's celebrations.

Via Holy Kaw.