We are kicking off the "year of the horse" with a little cultural excursion. Along with some friends, we decided to see how the locals celebrate Chinese New Year, so we all jumped on the subway (which is a cultural experience in itself) and headed down to Ditan Park for one of the many Temple Fairs going on in Beijing. It was a rare, beautiful, blue sky day here so it was a perfect time to go exploring.
We rode several subways to get to our destination and finally made it to the fair. It was very much like a fair would be back in the states........minus the rides and creepy carnival workers. There were all kinds of vendors selling everything from crazy looking owls, rainbow colored Mohawk wigs, panda hats (which is a standard here), street meat on a stick, scorpions on a stick and the ever popular ramen noodles. They also had a slew of games designed so that no one could possibly ever win, a magic show and the traditional dragon dance going on.
We played some games, watched some shows, did some people watching, watched some people watching us, posed for some pictures with our admirers and sampled some of the local street meat on a stick. Well, some of them did......as much as I would like to lose a few pounds I really didn't want to spend this break white knuckling the porcelain!
We spent the better part of the day there and then headed out for some lunch. We thought we would go find a traditional Chinese restaurant so that we could enjoy some dumplings.....but......it was the start of Chinese New Year and not very many places were open. Our choices were between KFC and a Thai restaurant.....go figure! After celebrating Chinese New Year with some Thai cuisine we headed back home. We really enjoyed the beautiful day, our good friends and all the crazy things here that make this journey so darn interesting!
 |
| Taking the subway. |
 |
| Julia and Ella at the Temple Fair |
 |
| Ahhhhh.......the split pants. That looks a bit drafty. Doesn't make you want to rest your purse in the front of a cart here. |
 |
| Ella checking out the huge suckers......and I'm not talking about the workers with clown hair. |
 |
| The rainbow rooster Mohawk. Nice! |
 |
| Our friends taking a corny picture! (terrible joke) |
 |
| Julia shooting pellets at balloons. |
 |
| Ella taking her shot. That worker is a brave soul standing so close! |
 |
| Beautiful day! |
 |
| I think it is safe to say, this man loves pandas..................and is likely single!! |
 |
| My friends son testing out the "street meat". Pork???? I dunno. |
 |
| Epic photo bomb............................... |
 |
| Let's try that again! |
 |
| Our friends! |
 |
| I love walking through the hutongs. |
 |
| Ferocious guard dogs. |
No comments:
Post a Comment