Lantern festival...

 A Saturday Out in Guangzhou, China

 

A few Saturdays ago we did some window shopping along Beijing Road which dates really far back...

"Underneath glass, below ground level, you can see the remains of streets from three different dynasties – namely the Song (960-1279), Yuan (1279-1368) and Ming (1368-1644). The older the street remains, the deeper they lie beneath the modern-day Beijing Lu mall, which makes you contemplate just how much history is buried undiscovered under Guangzhou and, indeed, all of China"

http://www.chinatravelsavvy.com/destinations/guangzhou/attractions/beijing-lu/

We also enjoyed a delicious lunch at Papa John's.  It was a very exciting lunch because pizza is hard to find in China and good pizza is even a bigger deal.  Many of our experiences like this have helped us really enjoy and appreciate the things we see as normal and take for granted back home. 

Lantern Festival at Yuexiu Park

212 acres in downtown Guangzhou decorated for the end of the Spring Festival or Chinese New Year.

We paid about $2 each to get in.

 

Entrance

Dragon that was about three times in length

 

 

 

 

According to...http://www.chinancient.com/fish/

"The Chinese, the character for fish is pronounced the same as the Chinese character for “abundance” or “surplus”.  Therefore, the fish symbol is frequently associated with other symbols and Chinese characters to symbolize the wish for “more” in the sense of “more” good luck, good fortune, long life and children. Despite being an ancient symbol, it is still often found in modern-day Chinese culture"

There were many cute lanterns and some really amazing ones.

The teapot below was made out of recycled brown medicine type bottles.

This one was made out of ping pong balls

The smurfs even made an appearance?  We also saw Iron Man and Spiderman.

A section with more traditional lanterns

Then some advertising of course...this was made out of a popular tea can sold everywhere in China.  Also it is the year of the snake.  Most of the snakes were cute.  A coworker told us that most people don't really like the year of the snake, most people favor the year of the Dragon or Rat.

This lantern was part of a big section of Chinese stories and fables (of course they were in Chinese so we couldn't read them), many parents were reading them with their children though.

The lantern festival turned out to be much more than we expected.  It was beautiful.