Perfect (Strawberry) World

Around Chinese New Year (or the "Spring Festival" as the one billion citizens in China actually call this momentous event) strawberries are for sale everywhere. The ones we buy come come perfectly aligned in a box. :-)



In het Nederlands: Is het geen prachtig gezicht? Deze twintig aardbeitjes in een doosje? 

Happy Year of the Snake: Temple Fair Mania

The Chinese New Year is here! Last Saturday night we inaugurated the Year of the Snake with a few happy fire crackers, and the next day we did the traditional Chinese thing: Go to a temple fair. 

 

Temple fairs are big fairs, with food, games, and performances, that take place at a lot of temples and other locations across town. The first few pictures here are from the Daguanyuan temple fair in southwest Beijing.

 

Lots of games...

 

...and snacks. The boys are eating delicious tomatoes (Simon) or mixed fruit (Thomas) on a stick, dipped in caramel sauce. Yum!

 

One particularly lovely sight at all the temple fairs are the children, bundled up in about five million jackets (give or take a few) and usually with animal hats! 

 

Party rockin' in the house!

 
We bought some of these delicious peanut bars and sesame crackers. They are really just gigantic slates of sugar with peanuts thrown into them. Delish, though I don't know if they'll appear on any kind of diet any time soon.

 

Above the lake was a tightrope performance. Never seen a guy bike across a lake on a rope in the blistering cold. :-).

 
Guards on duty.

 
Paparazzi are everywhere... Our blond boys are always invited into lots of pictures.

 
Spring came early this year...  No, the flowers everywhere are actually all fake! It looks lovely though :-)

  
In between temple fairs we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. I just thought I had to show you the sign at the ladies' bathroom: "Don't step onto the WC please". Please no! This is of course because people who are used to squatting might be inclined to take that same technique to a toilet seat half a meter from the ground. This might actually be a balancing act better than the tightrope walking at the fair!

 
We continue our entertainment at a second temple fair. This one is at the Dongyue temple, a daoist temple in northeast Beijing.

 
We buy and put up these red good-luck charms. (To buy the little tablets: 10 RMB, to have endless prosperity: priceless.)

 
More lovely decorations and wrapped children.

 
Simon and Thomas try their hand at some games and other activities. On the right behind them you see a whole wall of those red good-luck charms that people have put up.

 
We watched some great performances. This kid was doing things we had also seen big performers at the famous Shanghai Circus World do!

 

The temple itself was very interesting too. There were many small rooms (such as the one in the photo on the right) that showed particular aspects of Taoist believes in great detail. Mr. Frog had something to do with the gods from the water world. I prayed he would not show up in my bathroom anytime soon. 

 
On the way out, Simon climbs the Mt. Everest and we see this older man contemplate the traffic.
  
We're done with temple fairs for the day and head home. I just had to take a picture of the empty roads! Because everyone goes home for Chinese New Year, Beijing gets pretty deserted with only the true locals (and some lost Dutch Americans) hanging around. It's a great time for getting around!

In het Nederlands: Zondagochtend is hier het Chinese nieuwjaar, het jaar van de slang, begonnen. We mogen nog 15 dagen lang vuurwerk afsteken, dus daar hadden we niet zo'n haast mee. Wel gingen we meteen op zondag naar twee leuke "temple fairs". Een temple fair is een soort kermis bij een tempel, met spelletjes, eten en voorstellingen. Dat is gezellig en als het goed is brengt het ook een hoop geluk!

Panda World

On our recent vacation in Chengdu (see also the story about Leshan Buddha) we visited the Chengdu panda reserve. We had registered as "volunteers" for the day, so when we arrived a friendly member of the education staff took us to the panda area.

The panda's were amazing on all accounts. They are cute and adorable and kind of weird looking in their black and white outfits. Apparently though, they are not too bright. And from what I learned from the zoo keepers it seems a wonder they they are surviving at all...

Of course, as we all know, their habitat--the wild bamboo forests--are rapidly disappearing and that is their biggest problem. But their physiology is also not helping the survival of the species. Because of their bamboo diet, they apparently don't have a lot of energy to do anything at all. So they just eat and sleep, eat and sleep... with very little energy left to have sex perhaps a few times per year. This means that in a year, there are just not that many opportunities to create descendants. And even if a panda becomes pregnant and a panda cub is born, the cub's chances of survival are small.

But we quickly forgot about all these depressing details when we fed and played with the pandas. They seemed fun-loving animals and definitely enjoyed the apples we give them on a stick.

We fed them apples...

We cleaned up their bamboo. (If the panda's don't finish their bamboo, it's taken out of their cages and replaced with fresh bamboo. They are picky eaters and will only eat the fresh stuff. Every day, loads and loads of fresh bamboo from the mountain areas around Chengdu are wheeled into the panda reserve.)

We read a book with panda. 

We felt his fur. 

In het Nederlands: Tijdens onze vakantie in Chengdu, in de provincie Sichuan, een aantal weken geleden, gingen we ook op bezoek bij de panda's. Wat een mooie dieren. Maar het is geen wonder dat ze met uitsterven bedreigd worden. Niet alleen gaat hun habitat (ze eten alleen bamboe) eraan, maar ze hebben gewoon bijzonder weinig sex (dat kost te veel energy en dat kan je je dan op basis van die bamboe niet vaak veroorloven) en als er al een kleintje komt heeft die ook bijzonder weinig overlevingskansen. Maar de panda's die wij zagen maakten het goed, zoals je op de foto's ziet. 

Red Hot and Beautiful

Earlier this week I was in large department shore, and I just want to show you what the New Years section looks like:



There are red products everywhere! In just another week, on Saturday February 9, the Chinese calendar will turn a leaf and we'll be in the Year of the Snake. Wearing red will bring good luck.

 
Red bras and red fish.

 
Some more fish and little red envelopes used to hand out hongbao's (literally, red bags) with money as a good luck gift for friends.

 
Candy world.

 
Should I be wearing this?

In my backyard, winter has set in again. My little red lanterns bring in just a little bit of color!

In het Nederlands: Het Chinese nieuwe jaar begint volgende week zaterdag. Dat betekent veel vuurwerk en veel rode spullen: zakjes, BH's, kaarten, lampionnetjes, noem maar op. Alles is feestelijk rood want dat brengt geluk!