In past years, on the occasion of Chinese New Year, I have blogged about some of my own memories of this holiday from the times that I lived in Taiwan (1983-1984) and mainland China (2006-2013). This year I would like to reminisce a little about the time my family and I visited a "temple fair" (miaohui in Chinese) in China.
Temple fairs are a traditional part of Chinese New Year celebrations in China's capital Beijing. They have been in existence for centuries. They began as commercial events held near Daoist and Buddhist temples in conjunction with religious holidays. Nowadays, they generally take place during the first week of the lunar new year, and have largely lost their religious significance.
The temple fair my family attended while living in Beijing was a rather famous one that takes place in Altar of the Earth Park (Ditan Gongyuan), a traditional religious site where sacrifices were once made to the (supposed) god of the earth. During the fair, numerous traditional-style red lanterns are hung on the trees in the park. I remember that the day we went to the fair the weather was quite sunny, and the park was so crowded with people that in some places it was almost impossible to move (this is not unusual in China, especially during holidays!). My overall impression of the temple fair was of a Chinese version of a carnival fairway in the U.S. There were numerous arcade-style games, as well as booths or tents displaying and/or selling all sorts of traditional handicrafts and not-so-traditional consumer items. As I recall, one traditional handicraft that especially intrigued our daughter (who was perhaps six or seven at the time) was a type of "sculpture" hand spun out of a syrupy substance consisting mainly of sugar. I remember that we bought at least one of these for her, but I don't remember whether we let her eat it or not!
The temple fairs in Beijing, like the one we visited, are a good example of how China's Communists, who once sought to eradicate many aspects of traditional Chinese culture, have in recent years encouraged a revival of some pre-Communist traditions (for example, temple fairs were revived in the 1980s). Given the widespread loss of belief in Communist ideology among many Chinese, it is perhaps not surprising that such traditions have been revived (even if in a modified form) in order to bolster a sense of nationalism. Nevertheless, regardless of the underlying ideological rationale for reviving them, Beijing's temple fairs can be quite interesting to attend.
Image of red lanterns at the Altar of the Earth temple fair in Beijing from wikipedia.org