The Chinese New Year's Eve

Red lanterns, stunning fireworks, all kind of funny little sheep items (in Chinese Luna calendar its now sheep’s year), parades, thousands of people everywhere gathering together to celebrate… Does this sound familiar? That’s what I kind of thought, but I will tell you a little different story:

First of all, Chinese New Year is not just a New Year’s eve as we have used to celebrate on 31^st Dec. Here it is start for the Spring Festival (how it is more commonly called) which last from about a week up to a month depending a little bit how you calculate it, this year the main Spring Festival week was 18.-25.2. Sheep items are true, there is on sale everything you can imagine related to sheep (or a Chinese character meaning sheep) and people were buying that stuff…

During the Spring Festival people do gather around but not with big crowds. The Spring Festival is a time for Chinese people to go with their families and relatives and spend a time with them by watching New Years’ gala show on TV (estimate 700 million viewers!!), eat well, give presents etc. From a tourists point of view that is already kind of a bad start because it mean that most of the places close their doors as people leave from Beijing. Of course in a 20 million people city there is always people around but they are scattered around, not gathering in one place. For example one of the most famous bar streets (Hou Hai), more than half of the places were closed, and those one which were open, were mostly full of internationals… So now parades or parties on the streets/bars in China on New Year’s Eve.

Fireworks, yes and red lanterns, yes. Even that here have been fireworks going on for the past couple days nearly 24/7, the firework set in New Year even wasn’t a stunning big show (compared for example last New Year eve in London.), but  there was lots of them. Here it was more like everyone were shooting fireworks on their own all over the city and I really mean all over the city, even in a middle of the roads... Interesting time for taxi drivers. Red lanterns are everywhere, because Chinese people believe that the meaning of red lanterns is to scare dragons away and fireworks to invite good luck during festivals as driving evil spirits away.

The first day of the Luna year, there are temple fairs all over the city. That is more like of a real way for Chinese to celebrate Spring Festival. I would say that there were easily more than ten different temple fairs going around in different parks all over and around Beijing. It basically is like a big city festivals: Endless amount of stalls where (again) everything can be imagined are on sale, different games to play to win prizes (like in amusement parks) or many many different food options to buy (the best part). Then of course in the middle and between there were several stages where traditional performances were taken place: dancing, acrobatics and singing (or that is how they call it, but I would call it something else…). Oh, and remembered that in China is always important to ask price before buying something. I bought a filled pineapple half for a double price because didn’t ask the price beforehand and also didn’t pay attention on actual paying process… Alright, I lost around 20rmb (3e) so it is not end of the world, plus at least those pineapples looked cool :D

Overall experience of the Spring Festival was… On the other hand it was a slightly disappointment because I was kind of expecting more, Chinese New Year in China. But kind of same happened to me in Ireland as I was slightly disappointed for St. Patricks day celebration in Ireland.. So I guess it is kind of normal feeling. But still it was an interesting experience to see it (especially temple fair) and as I said, this Spring Festival still lasts almost a week so everything can come up.