Some Pictures from the Taipei Lantern Festival

The end of the two week period following Chinese New Year (known as Spring Festival), is marked with a final celebration known as the Lantern Festival. Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to venture out of the city to see the typical celebration which involves hundreds of lanterns being released into the sky, but there was a celebration a little closer to home in the Yuanshan Park area of Taipei.

The festival here was celebrated with hundreds of giant lantern sculptures, designed by various entrants ranging from university students to elementary students (or the parents of elementary school students...) all on display around a huge park area. Some of the lanterns were a lot of fun, so I thought I'd share some pictures. Happy New Year!

Beijing Part 3

Beijing: Part 3

It was my final day in Beijing and I was still yet to have gone into one of the city's principal attractions, the Forbidden City. The Forbidden City was for a long time the residence of the Emperor within Beijing and was named thus as it was forbidden for anyone to enter the complex without special permission from the Emperor. After imperial rule was brought to an end, the Forbidden City was given to public use and used to house many of China's ancient treasures from the course of it's history. Though many of the most revered treasures were evacuated to Taiwan when the Nationalists fled from the Communist Revolution, the Forbidden City still hosts a very impressive collection and was definitely a highlight of my trip.

We set off in the early morning, conscious of the masses of tour groups that crowd the tourist spots in Beijing over Chinese New Year. On our way to the Forbidden City, we looked over to Tiananmen Square, which was teeming with people already. Fortunately, it appeared that most of these tour groups had planned to cover the sites within Tiananmen first, as the Forbidden City wasn't too busy, and we didn't even have to queue, whereas we'd spoken to people from the hostel who'd had to queue for hours.

The Forbidden City itself is a huge collection of almost one thousand buildings, all of which are built in the same simplistic style and all a uniform red-orange with yellow roofs (yellow being the imperial colour).

Some of the buildings (like many in China) were guarded by these impressive looking lion statues on the outside.

I think this is the Hall of Supreme Harmony, although I can't say with certainty as, like I said, the buildings are all of a similar style. The buildings in the main square (after going through the front entrance) were the busiest part of the Forbidden City. The buildings here were roped off to the public, but the doors were open you could see the contents inside (such as the imperial throne). However, it was very stressful trying to get a look as this area seemed to be most popular with the tour groups and there were hordes of people all holding up their cameras, phones and i-Pads as they tried to get a peak/snap a picture of the interiors. 

Dragons, being the symbol of the emperor, were included in much of the decoration around the city.

After we left the main square, the tourists dissipated pretty much immediately and there was much more space to roam around. The Forbidden Cty was full of smaller paths which I thought were much more beautiful and pleasant to walk around, helped no doubt by the calmer atmosphere.

Along these paths were the entrances to various smaller buildings, within which there were different collections of ancient Chinese art, ranging from painting (there was a very cool special exhibition on the Buddhist arhats), bronzes, pottery and so on. As these galleries were not the main sites within the Forbidden City, the tour groups had obviously decided to give them a miss and they were nearly empty which was very nice!

One of the small streets within the Forbidden City. I really liked the decoration on the doors and at the top of the walls!

An entrance to a courtyard.

Some of the detail on the walls.

The corners of the roofs were all covered in dragons and lions (?) like the one above.

Eventually, we found this huge walkway, which led us to a large square which contained two big exhibitions on either side, the Hall of Clocks and the Treasure Gallery. Both of these required an extra ticket (only 1 pound) and were definitely more popular than the other galleries we'd visited. We decided to try the Hall of Clocks first, and after handing in our tickets, headed in!

The Treasure Gallery isn't just one room, like the name suggests, but a whole section of the Forbidden City, consisting of numerous buildings. The first thing you see upon entering is the nine-dragon wall, which, though busy, was fun to look at!

A close up of one of the dragons.

One of the walkways within the treasure gallery.

The treasure gallery contained a huge variety of treasures, ranging from jewellery (including a very impressive imperial headdress), huge thousand year old boulders with carvings on them, ceramics and jades. I've typically found jade to be a little boring here, but the jade collection at the Forbidden City was great with massive stones of jade that had been carved into to depict different scenes.

One of the main jade carvings.

The hall of treasures also had this well well, in which one of the emperor's most important consorts allegedly flung herself into during the turmoil surrounding the imperial family at the turn of the 20th century.

After seeing our fill of the treasure gallery (save a few pieces of the collection which were too busy with tourists for us to even try to get a look at), we headed out of the treasure gallery and to the entry of the Hall of Clocks. 

The Hall of Clocks contain a huge collection of clocks produced by British and European clockmakers for the Qing Dynasty emperors during the 18th century. However, to refer to the pieces in the collection as simply clocks would be a massive understatement. For many of the clocks, timekeeping was a secondary feature, while the main goal of the clockmakers was to show off their technical skills with what was essentially robotics. The clocks all had very intricate mechanisms inside so that many of them played scenes of people coming in and out of buildings at the turn of the hour. However, some of these went even one step further. There was one clock (though the actual timekeeping piece was very small) which was a sculpture of a man holding a brush which he would dip into a pot of ink and write four beautiful Chinese characters. Another clock consisted of an elephant which walked around the table swinging it's trunk and rolling its eyes. Though the clocks were all turned off (there was the option of a clock show later in the day), there was a movie playing in one room showing all of the clocks in actions and it was a lot of fun to watch!

Inside the Hall of Clocks.

The elephant clock which would have walked around, it's eyes and trunks moving as it went. Notice how small the actual clock is...

After seeing the Hall of Clocks, we decided to leave the Forbidden City and head on to our next place. This definitely seemed like a good idea as the full force of the crowds of tourists seemed to have arrived by the time we left and the whole area was getting uncomfortably busy.

At the back entrance of the Forbidden Ciry, there's a park known as Zhongshan Park which offers impressive views of the Forbidden City complex. We decided to have a quick look at this, and after entering the park and climbing many flights of stairs, we managed to get some great views of the Forbidden City and the rest of Berlin, made better by the uncharacteristically unpolluted air.

The Forbidden City from above.

For my last site in Beijing, I decided to head to Gulou area, a famous collection of hutongs which was full of shops and restaurants along with a huge Drum Tower and Bell Tower.

A Marilyn Monroe Statue we passed on the way.

A house built in to one of the hutongs. Notice the decorations on the door for Chinese New Year! The arhictecture of this area was very cool and definitely gave us a feel for the historic character of the city.

The Bell Tower

Though one guide book's description of Gulou being Beijing's version of Camden Town felt a little inapt, there were some funny looking shops like this scattered around...

The area was definitely busy and it felt like the quieter parts of the city were waking up again as people returned home and to work, the Chinese New Year break coming to an end.

We also saw lots of these food stalls selling this kind of candy which was made by blowing into sugar (similar, I think, to glass blowing).

Though a little expensive, so I didn't buy one, the animals were very impressive and really cool to check out.

Someone had a little too much fun with their fireworks?

The Drum Tower, from which Gulou gets it's name.

After walking up and down the streets of the hutongs, we decided to head back to the hostel before my flight back to Taipei the next morning...

The word for 'Goodbye' in Chinese is '再見' (Zai4 Jian4), literally meaning 'see you again' and I'm sure that I will see China again  in the future and further explore its fascinating ancient culture and history...

Beijing Part 2

Beijing: Part 2

The next morning, we woke up early for our trip to The Great Wall of China, organised by our hostel as part of their 'Secret Great Wall Tour' promising to take us away from the crowds to a less visited area. On the morning, the people at the desk informed us that it was snowing and asked us if we would like to postpone our trip until the next day. Unperturbed by the news, we decided to go ahead as planned! The trip involved a two hour minibus journey out of Beijing, and the longer the journey went on, the more obvious it became why our hostel had given us the option to delay the trip. It seemed that the further away we went from the city centre, the cloudier and cloudier it became, so that soon the fog made it hard to see more than ten feet in front of you. Eventually our minibus stopped (earlier than intended due to the snow) and we began the rest of our journey on foot until the wall slowly came into view.

Although the dense fog made it hard to see around us, and prevented us from seeing the promised spectacular views of the wall snaking over the mountains, the light layer of frost and snow covering everything was equally spectacular in it's own way... 

Most of the area of the wall we saw was pretty restored, but there were some more ruinous views like this one! Unfortunately the snow prevented us from seeing the fully unrestored bits of the wall, but the scenery was still great!

"不到長城非好漢"-毛澤東

"He who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man"-Mao Zedong

The walk along the wall was a little difficult at time, through the combination of my lack of adequate footwear and the thickening layer of ice and snow. There were points where we basically had to slide down the wall as it was a much easier option than trying to walk down upright. Eventually we had to turn back early as the wall became too steep and slippery. However, though not completely what I imagined, the journey along the wall was a really amazing experience and definitely felt like a unique way to see it. 

My friend Toby climbing up one of many flights of snow covered stairs.

The hostel definitely delivered in its promise to take us to a less busy section of the wall, and for the most part, the only people we could see walking along the wall were people who had come with us on the tour!

Conquering the wall...

After finishing our walk (and having only fallen over three times!) we headed back to the parking lot where our bus was where we were treated to a home cooked Chinese meal, provided as part of our tour package. The food was pretty good, and it felt nice to sit inside and warm up a little!

After we finished our meal, we headed back to the hostel, and soon laid out plans for the rest of the day. We decided to check out the 798 Art District, which is a collection of old factory buildings which have now been turned into a collection of galleries shops and restaurants (I've started to notice an increasing trend of these types of places in all the Asian cities I've visited...). 

However, when we arrived, we found (admittedly not to our surprise) that the district was still closed for Chinese New Years. However, we walked around anyway and got a slight feel for the area from the cool sculptures which were dotted across the streets.

Like this giant red monster!

After briefly exploring the area, we decided to head back to the subway and try our like with the Olympic Park, which we knew for certain would not be closed.

Along the journey to the MRT, we saw some people getting ready to restart the nightly Chinese New Year fireworks which continue throughout the Spring Festival. We also came across a road which seemed to have been previously closed off and was resultantly covered in hundreds and hundreds of burnt out fireworks which had been set off by locals keen to take advantage of the available space. It was a pretty crazy site, but unfortunately it didn't really capture well on film in the darkness so I couldn't get a picture of it!

After a longer than expected walk, we arrived at the subway and made a quick change on the subway to the Olympic Park station, ready to see the Bird's Nest and Water Cube.

The Bird's Nest

Apparently Beijing is bidding for the 2022 Winter Olympics, so some of the area was decorated with Winter Olympics images.

The Beijing National Aquatics Centre (AKA The Water Cube!)

The next morning was another early one as we woke up early to try to beat the crowds to Mao's Mausoleum, where the preserved body of Chairman Mao lies. However, upon navigating our way through the security of Tiananmen Square, we found that the Mausoleum was still closed, so we headed back disappointed to the hostel. After speaking to the people at the front desk and confirming that many of the places we wanted to check out would be closed still, we decided that we'd take advantage of the temple fairs going on throughout the city and check a few more of those out.

One of my hopes before coming to Beijing was that I would be able to witness a dragon dance as part of the Chinese New Year festivities. So we went through a list of Time Out's best Beijing Temple fairs before settling on Dongyue Temple fair which promised us ' drum troops, Chinese opera, acrobatics and cross-talk shows, all providing plenty of noise and entertainment.' This seemed like exactly what we were looking for, so we headed down to check it out!

However, upon arriving at the temple fair, it quickly became apparent that Time Out's description was an exaggeration/outright fabrication. The whole temple was very quiet with very few people and no drum troops, acrobats or dragon dancers.

Nevertheless, we decided to check out the fair anyway and were pleasantly surprised. After seeing a couple of temples in Taiwan or China, it's easy to quickly feel like you've seen them all and they often have a very similar feel to one another. However, this temple was unlike any that I've been to before and was filled with lots of small rooms you could look into which were filled with statues depicting what was essentially the bureaucracy of the Daoist heavens.

The temple contains 76 of such rooms, known as the different 'departments' which ranged from the more interesting, such as the department of punishments for criminals to the fully mundane (there were two separate departments which related to the writing and keeping of signatures on documents).

Some of the statues were pretty grotesque or exaggerated and fun to look at!

A funny looking demon leading away some sinners.

The temple also had a huge courtyard filled with stone tablets. Many of them were cracked or in decay, which made for a nice change to some of the more heavily restored temples and historic sites throughout the city.

It turns out Admiral Ackbar has been hiding in Beijing!

Some remnants of the snow from the previous days, honouring the year of the goat.

The temple, like most of the city, was covered in red decorations.

I'm not fully sure what this was, but people seemed to be taking turns walking round it in a circle while dragging the stone wheel.

However, although the temple itself was very interesting, we couldn't help but be a little disappointed with the atmosphere of the temple fairs. However, my friend Erin has a friend in Beijing who she had put me in contact with, so I decided to message her to get some advice on where things would be happening. She told us that she'd also checked a few out, only to find they were nothing like how Time Out had described them, but said that when she'd gone to Ditan Temple Fair (where we'd previously visited), there were lots of performances.

Considering the many closures around the city and the quiet atmosphere of the fair we'd just been to, we decided we'd give Ditan another try. At the very least, it had been packed and vibrant on our last visit!

As before, the fair was crowded and lively and it became obvious that this was the temple fair of choice for most Beijingers.

However, unlike last time we'd visited, the many stages which we had noticed previously were now holding numerous performances!

There were dancers...

And heavily made up singers...

This man, though visually very impressive, sang, shouted out a very strange screeching sound for most of his performance.

While walking around the fair, my friend Toby noticed some men who were wearing similar clothing to the dragon dancers who he'd previously seen in Hong Kong. After seeing them head to the performer's practice area by the main stage, we quickly spotted a dragon's head, confirming that heading back to Ditan had been the right choice!

After stumbling through some Chinese with the guard of the stage, we established that there would be a dragon dance, but couldn't get a specific time, and instead were simply told it was 'later'.

So while we waited, we watched more performances on the main stage...

First there was a large troupe of drummers.

Then some more dancers...

And then finally, the dragons! There were five in all (each consisting of two people) as well as multiple acrobats and the show was great fun to watch!

The dragons and acrobats would run across the stage, doing flips...

 and leaping into the air!

At one point, the dragons all lined up together and one of the acrobats did a back flip over them!

'祝大家新春快乐'-Wishing everybody a happy Spring Festival'

After the dragon dance, we decided to join in the fair games and eventually decided on this one which seemed to involve smashing giant golden eggs with hammers.

It turned out the game was exactly how it looked, and we were given a hammer and told to choose an egg which we wanted to smash, within which was a number that corresponded to a prize.

My friend and I ended up both winning the same number and walked away with some very authentic looking Pikachu stuffed animals.


After winning these prizes, we decided to leave the temple fair, which seemed to be coming to an end and headed back to the area by our hostel to enjoy some Beijing Duck.

This duck restaurant was recommended to us by our a hostel as a slightly cheaper alternative to the other very expensive and famous restaurant down the road.

Inside, you could see the ducks hanging from hooks outside the kitchen.

As well as the chef carving the duck before bringing the meat to people's tables.

The duck itself was delicious! The sauces were incredible, the duck was very flavoursome and the skin was crispier than any duck skin I'd ever had before (allegedly this is what Beijing duck is most famous for). Alongside the sauces and vegetables, there were also some sugar, which was apparently there for the skin to be dipped into. Although this sounds a little bizarre, the combination of the flavour of the crispy oily skin and the sugar was incredible and one of the highlights of the meal (which itself was one of the highlights of my trip!) All in all, the duck did not disappoint and I am now making it my goal to find some equally good Beijing Duck within Taipei (if such a thing is possible). I've yet to have gone a day without thinking back to and craving Beijing duck...

And with this meal, I finished my penultimate day in Beijing (and China!) Stay tuned for my final post!