Home 
Life in China New Year in Beijing
Life in China New Year in Beijing | New Year in Beijing |
|
|
|
| China | |
 BEIJING, the capital city of the most populous nation on earth, felt eerily empty over New Year as millions headed back to their towns and villages to be with their families.The wide streets and roads normally home to throngs of taxis, pedestrians, cyclists and traders, were an oddly lonely sight without their usual crowds. So it was with a strange sense of relief that we found Ditan Park, a large, neatly-ordered area just north of the city‘s inner ring-road, packed to the edges with thousands of revellers. Streams of red paper lanterns decorated the park, lining the paths and forming tunnels of colour above the tightly-packed crowds who were braving sub-zero temperatures to be there. We moved with the mass along a route framed by hundreds of small stalls selling everything from skinless chicks on sticks and squid kebabs to scarecrows and dog clothes.  People wore masks, waved small bamboo windmills and feasted on dumplings and candy floss. It reminded me of London’s Notting Hill carnival - with more colour, less music and no arrests.Breaking away from the crowd we were bustled into an area screened off on all sides. The ticket seller promised us a show to remember and pointed to some garishly painted pictures of a woman wrapped in snakes to emphasise his point. Won over by the amusing artwork and the promise of a “snake spectacular” we handed over our five kuai and joined a small crowd huddled around the drab looking stage. After a chilly 10 minute wait we were treated to a strangely surreal spectacle which included a man performing Kung Fu moves in time with a Sugababes song and a young girl swallowing a snake. Twenty minutes later, with English pop songs ringing in our ears and the cold Beijing breeze whipping at our faces, we moved on. In the centre of the park an area had been set up where children whizzed around a frozen lake on ice sledges, tried to hook plastic ducks out of an artificial stream, played in a bamboo maze or competed in a croquet competition. It resembled an English village fete with a Chinese twist. We caught the last glimpse of a colourful dragon dance show at the north end of the park before joining the sea of people squeezing through the exit and seeping into Beijing’s streets and roads before heading home. Tom Mackenzie Tom is a British journalist who moved from Finsbury Park, London, to Chaoyang District, Beijing, at the beginning of the year. Having spent nearly three years as a reporter for a weekly tabloid covering stabbings, shootings and celebrity shenanigans in north London he decided it was time for a new challenge and moved to the capital in a bid to learn the lingo, dabble with some freelance writing and familiarise himself with Chinese culture. |
|
