Temple fair

There are many events organized during the new year period such as parades and lion dances (and not dragons like I believed), new year markets, temple fairs and fireworks. Today Alice and I went to Ditan park to visit the temple fair over there. This fair is the biggest and most popular one in Beijing.

The 2 of us had noticed that the city was pretty empty these days, especially the subway. When we arrived at the park we actually found the people. A huge crowd of families (i.e. parents + child + grand-parents) came to visit the fair. There are hundreds of game or food stands (and almost none of drinks because we've been looking for them). You can watch different groups performing some traditional Chinese dance or music. Let's face it the quality of the performance varied a lot on the group. Some were amazing, some were just ok, some others we still believe anyone could do it. Still it was quite interesting to watch. What was also fun to watch was the people and the way they were dressed. It felt sometimes more like a Halloween / Mardi gras party than a New Year one. Judge by yourself :)