fireworks

Last night, right as I was about to hop in the bed, the sky lit up. So I did something I haven't been able to do since I was in my teens. I went and grabbed a few extra pillows, made myself comfortable at the foot of the bed, and watched nature's fireworks display. Didn't think to try and snap photos,just enjoyed the moment. It was wonderful! There were times the light seemed to come from under the clouds and illuminated every curve and depth of a cloud mass, then there were times it streaked around and across the clouds, then other times it stretched downward, and occasionally it was just a flash light. There was no rain, just the magnificent display of lights. The wildest lightning (non-scary, that is) that I've ever witnessed was what I dub an "electric storm". We never really heard thunder, but the lightning stretched continuously east to west and west to east across the sky. It looked as if the bolts were chasing each other. That was one of my favorite memories of something I did with my brother, though my Mom wasn't very happy to discover us laying outside on the ground watching! In my stupid defense, we knew not to sit or stand up, nor to be near a try or anything metal. Mother for some bizarre reason still didn't think that was good enough.
Do you think the Chinese got the initial idea of fireworks from watching lightning?