Feeling the burn

The main event is the Burn itself, where fire eaters, breathers and dancers perform in front of a colossal dragon effigy before it is set alight, to roars of delight from the crowd.

The culmination of the long weekend, the Burn reflects on the spirit of its 10 principles, as the elemental, even primal, power reminds us of our innate humanity－a feeling best experienced when joining together to celebrate around a fire.

Determined to see everything, I must have made dozens of circuits around the entire camp, which was the biggest to date. On one of these tours, I bumped into a top hat and aviator goggles-sporting burner whom passersby hailed as "Founder".

Sven Aarne Serrano is indeed a veteran burner, having been involved with the earliest days of Burning Man back in the 1980s in San Francisco, as part of the Cacophony Society.

Life has since moved him to Osaka and then on to China, where he became the first China regional contact for the organization in 2011, and the founder of Dragon Burn.

I asked him about his experiences pulling together this ambitious event.

"We made a conscious effort to respect all Chinese laws, make sure the locals were happy, not wake up the neighbors with the music and clean up after ourselves," he says, adding that the local authorities were very cooperative.