Another Spring Festival, Another Ditan Park (地坛公园) Temple Fair (庙会), VI: People (人民)

Alone among the four parks arranged around Beijing's four cardinal points, Ditan Park remains a functioning temple and place of worship for Daoist believers. While there are still a fair number of Daoists (道教徒) in China, Daoism (道教) has been largely eclipsed by Buddhism (佛教), Christianity (基督教), and Islam (伊斯兰教). However, unlike these other faiths, which were imported from outside of China, Daoism is the Middle Kingdom's only major home-grown religion.

During the Temple Fair, Ditan Park's sacrificial alter (祭坛) is open only to Daoist worshipers. The photo above shows these people engaged in worship (崇拜). They lighted incense sticks, bowed down to worship (鞠躬) and paid respects to the gods and their dead ancestors (祭祀).

However, well over 90 percent of the visitors to the Temple Fair go there to have fun, not to worship. That said, the folks I photographed below—they are definitely what the Chinese would call 老百姓, or “ordinary people”—seemed rather glum. I photographed them because they were holding those fake flowers (假花) and wheat sheaves (假麦秆) mentioned in that very recent post about things for sale at the Ditan Park Temple Fair. According to my good and very clever Chinese friend, 路红艳, the wheat sheaves are carried home because they symbolize a good harvest (丰收) and wealth (财富).

Finally, at both this year and last year's Temple Fairs, one could spot some odd local life here and there. A few of the younger teenage and twenty-something visitors put on garishly colored and spiked hairdo (爆炸式头发) style wigs.

Like many Chinese people who agree to be photographed by laowai, the fellow in photo below did the V for victory sign. If the photo were larger, you could easily tell that he was wearing a rug over his real hair—readers will just have to take my word for it here. In any case, he surely put on the spiked hair just for fun and as a joke; it certainly wasn't done to convey feelings of anger and alienation.

This is not to say that the “punk” (朋克) look and scene is entirely absent in China. One day, while riding the 107 bus back home from Hou Hai (后海), I spotted five or so “punks” standing on the Goulou Dajie (鼓楼大街). These people were the real deal—they had Mohawk (莫霍克) hairdos and wore black leather trousers (黑色的裤子) and jackets (黑色的夹克). This clothing had the trademark white metal studs.

I vaguely recall that these punks were all fellows. They certainly looked a bit fierce and scary (凶狠) and one clearly wouldn't want to have his/her daughter dating any one of them. Being in a crowded and moving bus, I didn't have the chance to take a photo, and I suspect that doing so would not have been a good idea anyway.

The numbers of young Chinese who are angry and alienated is certainly growing at the moment. People looking for a good literary depiction of such youth here in the capital should read Chun Sue’s recent novel, BEIJING DOLL, which has been translated from Mandarin by the estimable Howard Goldblatt (he has also translated the work of Su Tong and Mo Yan, who were mentioned in an earlier, very recent post). And the city has a thriving underground hard rock scene.

That said, fortunately the whole punk skinhead culture has yet to catch on here the way it has in parts of Europe and North America. China remains a rather socially conservative place, too conservative to tolerate that kind of thing. However, the Middle Kingdom is undergoing rapid social change and while most of these changes are for the better, some of them are not.

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).
庙会 (miao3hui4).
人民 (ren2min2).
道教徒 (dao4jiao4tu2).
道教 (dao4jiao4).
佛教徒 (fo2jiao4).
基督教 (ji1du1jiao4).
伊斯兰教 (yi1si1lan2jiao4).
祭坛 (ji4tan2).
崇拜 (chong2bai4).
鞠躬 (ju1gong3).
祭祀 (ji4si4).
老百姓 (lao3bai3xing4). As stated in an earlier post, this literally means “old one hundred names.” Since there are only about 100 commonly used family names in China, this term came to denote ordinary people.
假花 (jia3hua1). The first character means fake, the second means flower.
假麦秆 (jia3mai4gan3). Again, the first character stands for fake, the second two for sheaf of wheat.
路红艳 (lu4hong2yan4).
丰收 (feng1shou1).
财富 (cai2fu4).
爆炸式头发 (bao4zha2shi4tou2fa1). This literally means “exploding” (爆炸) style (式) hair (头发).
朋克 (peng2ke4).
后海 (hou4hai3). For those not familiar with Beijing, this area is the capital's new bar district and entertainment zone. It's centered around the two long and narrow lakes located north of Beihai Park.
鼓楼大街 (gu3lou2da4). 鼓楼 is the Mandarin word for Bell Tower, which lies at the end of the 鼓楼大街, or street. In ancient Beijing, the Bell and Drum Towers were the tallest structures in the city.
莫霍克 (mo4huo4ke4).
黑色的裤子 (hei1se4de5pi2ku4zi5).
黑色的皮夹克 (hei1se4de5pi2jia1ke4).
凶狠 (xiong3hen3).