around the chinese new year, most of the ordinary parks and temples are transformed. paper lanters are hung from the trees, booths are set up selling food, handicrafts or trinkets, and there are lots of games. the fairs are basically what we'd call a fair or carnival, but everything is more decorated and a bit less predictable. there are also outdoor shows put on by actors covering a wide variety of topics...(reenactments of the first chinese space walk, human sacrifices, and old well-known folk tales to name a few) , musical performances, and ice sculptures. we really didn't know what to expect at the two we went to, and as is usual in china, you never really get what you expect anyway. ---cheesy karaoke in the huge outdoor square built for gatherings and human sacrifice hundreds of years ago, children going for rides on robot dinosaurs that lurch along the park paths, adults and children riding the equivalent of the little 25 cent horse rides outside of grocery stores, but instead of horses large dinosaurs, an old man singing into a microphone and playing drums and cymbal while selling viewers a look into the windows of his strange contraption brightly painted but very old-looking, the park's old tower which you could climb and ring the giant bell inside, and the list goes on.
the front gate
you could pay to be carried around by 8 festively-dressed men to music blasting from speakers at a volume that tested the limits of the human ear
a game: through the old coins at the giant coin--try to get them through the center. the prize? good luck for the new year.
the strange old contraption with little windows to look through
one of the games: roll the tire and try to have it land encircling one of the monetary amounts. it seemed easy, but i watched for awhile and no one could win...
at the temple: i'm not sure what these were for; i think you could pay to hang one on the fence. there were hundreds and hundreds of them.
one of the strange mythical turtle/lion creatures. i am a big fan of mythical chinese creatures, i was really wishing these particular ones were real.
the oldest inscribed stone tablet at this temple, kept behind glass. i don't know a lot of characters, but was still able to read some as the written chinese language hasn't changed a great deal over the last 2000 years or so. (besides being simplified by the communists when they came to power).
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