My Christmas lights were cheaper than yours… but will probably kill me.
Comments Published December 17th, 2009 in Chinese Life, Experimental Photography, Photography
I know, I know, it’s a catchy title for a blog post, but let me explain…
Pictured above are my 2RMB Christmas lights. That’s about 18 pence.
A close-up shows nothing special, nothing strange. Just your ordinary, run-of-the-mill Christmas lights… heck, they even flash!
This is where things start to get interesting. Chinese power runs at 220-230Volts, and as you can see here, they just plug straight into the wall, with no step-down-box, or transformer or…well, I’m not an electrician, but in the UK, stuff like this usually has a plug, then a small box (that usually gets a little warm) and then the lights. Anyway, I figure that it must be built inside the actual plug or something.
I thought wrong. 220volts straight into the wall and straight into the bulbs. Not even a fuse in sight, and yet they flash! (they all flash at different speeds – I bought 5 sets.)
A close up of the quality joinery between the plug and the wire. So there you have it. They stack into each other, there’s no fuse, no sort of transformer, and not the double-insulation of a third plug-pin like we have in the UK. In China there’s usually a nice blue spark whenever you plug anything in, but these I’ve been plugging in wearing rubber gloves.
But, all in the name of good photos:
Purrdy.
My five, stacked sets. Totalling about 90p worth.
They look good out of focus too!
With some blue-peter DIY’ing, you can make the out-of-focus circles become any shape you want. Here, I tried Christmas trees. Unfortunately I got the size wrong and messed it all up, but I will try again soon!
Coca-cola has some Christmas connotations, so I thought; why not?
A slightly more Asian Christmas.
and finally, one of your faithful blogger.
Christmas time will be busy for me, so updates will come as they come. I really wanna take more photos involving my Christmas lights, but just don’t have the time.
How about you? How are your Christmas preparations coming along? Send me a photo or two!
I love the Christmassy ringflash!
Will all be normal Christmas stuff here, seeing family and eating so much I have to be rolled everywhere 🙂 Hope you have a great Christmas! xx
our christmas lights this 2010 would be made up from light emitting diodes which does not generates so much heat:;”
Those lights, with the flat pin plugs are what are sold here in the USA, although our line voltage is from 110-125. The better quality ones have miniature fuses embedded in the plugs – you can pop out a little sliding cover to change them if they ever blow. Others don’t. These things are disposable anyway. They don’t last longer than one season.
P.S. If you are uncomfortable with the supplied crimped-on plug, you can always buy normal screw-on replacement plugs. But for something so cheap like this, not worth it. And obviously with a standard plug, you won’t be able to stack them. 🙂
it is wise to choice to select Light Emitting Diode christmas lights becaue they are not fire hazard *`,
Indoor Grills: Correct. But considering how little heat the midget lights emit, it’s not much of a hazard. The bigger danger is the actual wire and its less-than-ideal connection to the mains plugs, as illustrated. That’s why my suggestion to cut off the chintzy crimp-on plug and use a standard replacement mains plug.
After the light-set is taken down, the replacement plug can be unscrewed and tossed in a drawer for later re-use on something else. The light-set then gets thrown in the trash. 🙂