“Temple Fairs” are an important part of the Spring Festival celebrations in Beijing and most other places in China. With the exception of Shanghai—one of my Chinese friends who lives there informs me that Temple Fairs are not big in that city—lots of people here make going to these fairs a family outing during the Spring Festival. One could certainly call this behavior a 传统风俗, or custom handed down by tradition.Temple Fairs offer something for every member of the family, adults and children alike. First, they typically have lots of different kinds of entertainment (文娱活动) and performances (表演) such as singing (唱歌), dancing (跳舞) (yes, the dancing includes “lion dancing” [狮子舞]), juggling, and the like. Families can also enjoy various games (游戏), amusements (游乐), and rides. And vendors set up lots of small stands (摊子) so people can purchase merchandise, especially arts and crafts. And last but certainly not least, there is always lots of street food for sale as well.
As the “Temple” part of “Temple Fair” implies, many temples, both Daoist and Buddhist, put on these fairs. For example, Beijing's oldest Daoist Temple, the White Cloud Temple (白云观), holds an annual Temple Fair during the Spring Festival. I visited this temple before the 2007 Spring Festival and while it's certainly very interesting and worth seeing, it's far from where I live and rather difficult to find. Since Ditan Park is very near Dongzhimen, I've opted over the past two years to go that particular Daoist Temple's Temple Fair. And in 2008 I attended another Temple Fair in Chang Dian (厂甸), which is located south of Tian'anmen Square.
I'll be talking about the Chang Dian Temple Fair in a future blog post. However, in this blog post and the next five which follow, I'll be doing what might be called a series of photographic essays on the Ditan Park Temple Fair.
The two photos above illustrate one defining feature of the Ditan Park Temple Fair: it is very, very, very crowded. Mandarin has lots of so-called chengyu(s) (成语), which are basically four character expressions that are similar to idioms in the English language. One great chengyu is 人山人海, which literally means “people mountain, people sea.” And as the two photos above make clear, the Ditan Park Temple Fair definitely has 人山人海.
The first photo, shot during this year's Temple Fair, shows the mountain and sea of people streaming into Ditan Park. I was in the middle of these hordes, shuffling slowly along. And yes, Chinese people normally tend to walk slowly—this can be very aggravating in subway stations, particularly if you're rushing to catch the next train—so a huge crowd will cause pedestrian movement to slow to a crawl. The other photo, shot from an Andingmen Road pedestrian overpass after I left last year's Ditan Park Temple Fair, shows the masses streaming out of the park's attractive west gate entrance.
So if you have any problem with being packed into a big crowd and being shoved and jostled about by other people, then going to a Temple Fair might not be your cup of tea. My good CNLC colleague Richard Janosy told me that an estimated 660,000 people attended the Ditan Park Temple Fair one day during last year's Spring Festival. To put that figure in perspective, the metropolitan area population of my Fresno, CA hometown is about 550,000 people. And these people are spread out over a 100+ square mile area, not compressed into a space the size of two or three medium sized city blocks.
That said, if you stay off the Ditan Park's main paths, you will have space to stand and walk about without bumping into other people. One such place is a building complex flanking Ditan's main sacrificial alter. As the photo below indicates, this place has a very nice moon-shaped gate.
The Chinese characters used in this post, along with their Romanized spelling (Pinyin) and tones are listed below. A number 1 indicates that the character has a flat tone, a number 2, a rising tone, a number 3, a falling rising tone, a number 4, a falling tone, and a number 5, a neutral tone.地坛公园 (di4tan2gong1yuan2). 地坛 means temple of the earth, while 公园 is the Mandarin word for “public park.” Beijing has three other parks with the 坛 suffix in their names. The parks are arranged around the city's east, south, and west sides (地坛 is on the north side of the capital). They are 日坛 (ri4tan2; temple of the sun), the famous 天坛 (tian1tan2; temple of heaven), and 月坛 (yue4tan2; temple of the moon).
庙会 (miao3hui4). Temple Fair.
今年的庙会再是人山人海 (jin1nian2de5miao3hui4geng4shi4ren2shan1ren2hai3de5). 今年means “this year,” and the latter character is the word for year. 更是 means again. And as noted in the post's main text, 人山人海 stands for “people mountain, people sea.”
传统风俗 (chuan2tong3feng1su4).
文娱活动 (wen2yu2huo2dong4). Interestingly enough, when Mandarin speakers talk of going to watch entertainment, they use a different word, namely 演出 (yan3chu1). The phrase watch entertainment is thus 去看演出. The first two characters, qu4kan4, mean “go to see.”
唱歌 (chang4ge1).
跳舞 (tiao4wu3).
狮子舞 (shi1zi5wu3). 狮子 is the Mandarin word for lion.
游戏 (you2xi4).
游乐 (you2le4).
摊子 (tan1zi5).
白云观 (bai2yun2guan4). The first character is the Mandarin word for “white,” the second is the Mandarin word for “cloud”, and the last is one Mandarin word for “daoist temple.”
厂甸 (chang3dian4).
成语 (cheng2yu3).
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