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!