China recently announced they'll build a new series of boosters that will probably use kerosene and LOX. The CZ-2F booster is part of the Long March family of boosters. These boosters have used hypergolic propellants from the beginning because they were derived from military missiles, just the same as many of our boosters are derivatives of early missiles (Delta, Atlas, and Titan). Hypergolic propellants are storable liquids at room temperature, though they've very nasty stuff being both toxic and corrosive. However, the storability is important for fast response which is why our first generation ICBMs (Atlas and Titan I) were only in service for a short time before being replaced by the hypergolic fueled Titan II and solid-fueled Minuteman series.

I also saw a lot of stuff falling off of the booster several seconds after liftoff. I'm not certain what it was, but the pieces looked very regular and dark, unlike the irregularily shaped pieces of ice that break off of cyrogenically cooled boosters. It's possible they were some form of insulation or padding to protect parts of the booster until it clears the tower. The pieces reminded me of the stuff that falls off of a Peacekeeper missile after launch.