Temple of Earth, 地坛, is one of the four temple for Earth, 地, Moon, 月, Sun, 日, and Heaven, 天. These four temple is placed in the four point of the compass from the center of Beijing. (Temple of Heaven is the most famous). Temple of Earth is mainly a park, but have also some buildings and a big "altar", that is square because of the classic Chinese believe that the earth was square. The park is located just outside the 2:nd north ring road and is really big - about 700 x 700 meter, so it take some time to go around the whole. Temple of Earth is not a "heavy" tourist attraction, but can be a pleasant place for a walk after a visit the Lama Temple or the Confucius Temple that both are very close just on the other side of the ring road.
In these New Year days it is every year hold a festival at Temple of Earth. Could be interesting, I thought, so I went there. The festival was in my eyes 90% market selling of "crap". The rest 10% was local fast food and red lanterns in the trees. These rad lanterns is one of the characteristics for this festival. So - not so very funny, but a little interesting.
The thing that I really will remember from this festival was that it was so EXTREMELY LOTS OF PEOLPE!. Every little spot on the ground was covered by humans. After two second of thinking I realize that this is obvious since all are free from work these days. It was just only one person in the complete park that was not Chinese! Sometimes it was actually hard to decide by your self which direction to go, and it was a fight to se what was to be sold at the small shops. After one hour I got some kind of panic and wanted to get out, but that was not so easy.
Tigers shows up on many places a day like this.
It was so much people that it was not one single free spot on the ground, and you have to follow the river of people. The red lanterns in the tree is characteristic for this festival.
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