With Lunar New Year Show, Another Link to China for a New York Fireworks Family
Viewed from one angle, a hopeful tableau of Chinese-American relations unfolded over the weekend on a pier in Red Hook, Brooklyn: American and Chinese pyrotechnicians loading three barges with equipment for a major fireworks display in honor of the Lunar New Year, using Chinese-made explosives and American-made hardware.
Viewed from another angle, however, the scene was nothing more than a bunch of guys doing a hard job in the bitter cold. With gusts sending the wind chill into double-digits below zero, Phil Grucci, who was overseeing the operation, was not going to expend too much energy finding deeper meaning in the situation.
“They’re all saying, ‘What the heck we doing out here?’ ” he said on Sunday, laughing a cloud of vapor.
The fireworks display, scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, is part of a series of events over the next several days to commemorate the Lunar New Year, which falls on Thursday. The Central Academy of Fine Arts, China’s largest art academy, as well as several prominent New York cultural groups including the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center and the New-York Historical Society are involved in the celebrations this year.
“With China rising, China itself is trying to be included as part of the mainstream,” said Shirley Young, the chairwoman of the U.S.-China Cultural Institute, a group based in New York that has been promoting cultural exchange between the countries.
The fireworks project is, in some ways, a granular example of the increasingly intertwined economic, cultural and political relationship between the countries.
A linchpin of the event is Mr. Grucci, the head of Fireworks by Grucci, based in Bellport, N.Y., which was founded by his great-great grandfather Angelo Lanzetta, an Italian immigrant.
In recent years, the company has developed a close relationship with the Chinese authorities.
Mr. Grucci was the chief fireworks designer and engineer for the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games in Beijing in 2008; and for the 2009 celebrations commemorating the 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
The company’s relationship with China began in 1979 when Mr. Grucci’s grandfather, Felix Grucci Sr., started importing fireworks.
“My grandfather was very reluctant,” Mr. Grucci said. “He was very passionate about making it here, making it at home. So that was a challenge within my family.”
The company now buys most of its fireworks from China, where it has contracts with several factories.
Mr. Grucci acknowledged the irony in the fact that while the history of fireworks is traced back to the invention of gunpowder in ancient China, his company has been the go-to firm for several of the most high-profile Chinese exhibitions in recent years.
The Chinese are world leaders in fireworks manufacturing, he explained, but their fireworks display industry is young. And it was the Italians in the early 19th century, he pointed out, who took Chinese gunpowder and started adding elements, such as metals and salts, that created the sorts of patterns and sequences that pointed toward modern displays.
Italian immigrants took that know-how to the United States, he said, and among them was Mr. Lanzetta, who entered through Ellis Island in the 1850s “with formulations under his arm.”
The Gruccis’ involvement in the event this week came by another twist in the double helix of culture and business.
Cathy Barbash, an arts consultant based in New York who has been doing business in China for about two decades, said China’s Culture Ministry introduced her to the Central Academy of Fine Arts, which was looking for an American company to help put on the fireworks display.
She had a personal connection to the Gruccis: Her mother, Lillian Barbash, was for many years the presenter of the New York Philharmonic concerts on Long Island, which typically ended with fireworks displays by the family.
The show on Tuesday is scheduled to last about 20 minutes and involve the launching of about 4,000 devices over the Hudson River near the Chinese Consulate in Midtown Manhattan.
The concept for the show was created by Huang Jiancheng, a prominent Chinese designer, and the visual effects were designed by Intently Fireworks, a Chinese firm based in Liuyang, a city in Hunan Province that is the de facto capital of China’s pyrotechnics industry and home to more than 1,000 fireworks companies, said Zhang Yang, the international manager of Intently.
Ms. Zhang accompanied her father, Zhang Qiuming, the president of Intently, as well as three of the company’s pyrotechnicians, to the wind-whipped pier on Sunday and Monday. Within view of the Statue of Libertyand 1 World Trade Center, Mr. Zhang and the pyrotechnicians helped Mr. Grucci’s crew load equipment onto the barges.
On Sunday afternoon, Mr. Huang dropped by the pier with a small entourage that included a videographer.
“We came to check that everything is good,” Mr. Huang said through an assistant, Lyu Xiaozhuo. “And we think everything is good.”
Lunch arrived, and the barge crew sought shelter from the cold in a double-wide trailer, where they shed layers of outerwear and grabbed paper plates for the food: large cheese pizzas and Chinese takeout.
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