Shanghai police seized over 1,000 boxes of illegal fireworks from a truck stopped at a toll station in Songjiang district Thursday morning, thepaper.cn reported.
The authorities had been tipped off that this truck would be transporting fireworks from Hunan Province, the biggest fireworks producing region in China. Shanghai police secretly monitored the truck and stopped it as soon as it arrived on Shanghai border.
The truck driver, surnamed Zhang, said that in order to evade police inspections, he covered up the boxes of fireworks with cartons of other goods. He is now under administrative detention.
Shanghai instituted a ban on fireworks within the Outer Ring Road in December of last year in a bid to curb air pollution. The practice was claimed to be a big success.
Anyone who illegally manufactures, transports, stores or sells fireworks in the city will be punished. Anyone illegally storing or selling fireworks within the Outer Ring Road will be fined up to 100,000 yuan.
