We lived in the coolest apartment. 11th floor looking over a large man-made lake called Dragon Lake (Long Hu), and so when the lightning flashed the whole lake would reflect it, and all of the skyscrapers out there in the distance created a kind of wall around this lake, and we all had the great view of it. When the lightning flashed off and on rapidly, it came in to our dark apartment where we had all the lights turned off for maximum effect off the lightning flashes, so awesome... and so our huge two story tall window panes would let all that light in creating shadows in the form of a huge window onto all of the rooms inside. Inside our apartment there was a balcony and so it was very open. We would just sit back and watch this awesome show as a family, and then wait and count by seconds until we would hear the loud thunder! 9 seconds wait meant it was a storm that was about 2 miles away!*
There is a video of this night. Here it is with me narrating the text above:
*(each 5 seconds is a mile away, so 15 seconds is 3 miles)