Kungfu Chronicles: Happy Chinese New Year!

The Chinese New Year is based on a combination of lunar and solar movements. This year it fell on February 9. There were celebrations for a week leading up to Chinese New Year, Chinese New Year itself is a week-long celebration called the "Spring Festival", and there were still fireworks and temple fairs for a week after that week. China takes a whole week off and the week of Chinese New Year is meant for the Chinese to go to their hometowns and visit family.

We had originally planned on taking a trip out of China because of the crazy crowds, but because of poor planning and procrastination we didn't book early enough. By the time we sat down to book our trip, flights were expensive and hotels were all sold out! So we decided experiencing Chinese New Year in China would be a fun way to spend our break.

During Chinese New Year all the temples hold "Temple Fairs." People come to worship and celebrate. There is food, shows, and lots of arts and crafts...but, it's cold!

We chose to go to DONGYUE TEMPLE in Beijing. We heard that it was family friendly, so we bundled everyone up and drove into the city. The Dongyue Temple was built in 1319 by Taoist Monks. It is the largest Daoist temple in northern China. Daoism believes that life is generally happy but that it should be lived with balance and virtue, and needs a peaceful and harmonious environment. "The Dao" means "the way" - but cannot be defined because it exists beyond all forms.
Taoism is an ancient Chinese religion also called the water course way, for it believes that life flows in much the same way as a river. And like the river, though we are able to have influence over our lives, we are never able to take total control.

There were two fenced-off statues of horses that people were walking around and touching. My friend Hilary and I figured it must be good luck so we touched the horses too :)

There were games for the kids to play. For this game you buy these "special" tokens and try and throw them through the hole.

All the kids wanted in on the action!

There were also Chinese acrobatic shows. It was fun to see but hard to enjoy for too long because it was so cold standing there!

And of course we always enjoy sampling the local food choices. I can't remember what these were called, but they were like balls of funnel cake, with sugar to dip it into. And then the meat on skewers.

Afterwards, we stopped to warm up at Burger King, and finish off the days entertainment by taking pictures of ourselves in this funny mirror :)

Chinese New Year wouldn't be Chinese New Year without FIREWORKS! They were everywhere. We stood outside Friday night and it honestly sounded like a war zone...for hours! There isn't just two or three big main firework shows hosted by someone in particular like our 4th of July celebrations. But everybody does their own huge firework show. I walked out on the balcony of our second floor at one point that night and heard explosions all around me close and in the distance. I also saw about 8 different firework shows at one time! I wonder how many fires they have during Chinese New Year? It was interesting to watch the pollution index that evening too -- it spiked off the charts around 1 a.m.