Goofy Hats and Rat on Sticks
Trip Start
Dec 2007
1
22
41
Trip End
Aug 2008
Beijing,
China
Sunday, February 10, 2008
The Ditan Temple is an actual Buddhist Temple, but it sells out pretty much all their principles of self-deprivation and the rejection of the worldly values for 15 days to host one big bad ass party. Fully explotating my regaled status as a most valued guest of the my local, Holiday Inn hotel...I got the concierge to get me information on the Temple Fair and right out directions for my taxi cab ride... I hop in and my guy drives quickly to the nearly abandoned streets of Beijing. It is crazy...it is as if New York City (Manhattan) was without 75 percent of its people. Everyone in China goes home for the holidays, and so this town just evacuates. It's a little creepy. As we get closer to the fair, I see people with silly hats and masks...stuffed animals and noise makers on sticks. We exit the highway, and my driver is stuck in a monstrous traffic jam. He points down the street and then turns off his meter. I assume he wants me to get out and walk, so I do. When I get out, I see a mass of people all walking in the same direction. It is very much similar to being engulfed in the foot traffic leaving a huge football stadium after a close game, a place like Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor, or the Rose Bowl in Pasadena; any stadium that holds over 100-thousand people.
I join the throngs, and intermingle amongst my follow sheep heading to the fair. We walk, as a mass, shoulder to shoulder, like a huge amoeba, towards the huge gates of The Ditan Temple Park. When we all arrive, our pack splinters....some head to a place to buy street food and souvenirs, but most move to the right and make a beeline towards a ticket window. 10 yuan (about 1.25) and you're in the door. And then, you walk again, packed together with your other follow fair-goers down a very long and even thinner path to the actual Temple. Claustrophobics Anonymous here I come....
Once inside the fair itself, I see all the common trappings of a County Fair in the states, without the livestock and amusement park rides. We have games of luck and skill that award prizes for such incredible personal talents as tossing a ring over the milk bottle, whacking a mole, shooting oversized basketballs into undersized basketball hoops and the of course, the always popular, shoot the real life dancing clown actor with a rifle. Fun for all the kiddies. This is the Mid-Way, just as we would have at our carnivals. A little farther down the road is the area to buy cheap junk...magic tricks, silly t-shirts, goofy hats and masks, and tall things on sticks that make incredibly loud noises when the wind blows through them. Imagine a pinwheel that emits around 120 decibels, and there are hundreds if not thousands of them. Everything you can think of, and a few you can't, are for sell here, and it seems everyone must buy at least a few things before leaving...I think they check you as you depart.
In the center of the fair is an ice structure at least 40 to 50 feet tall. I can't tell exactly what it is at first, as I am on the back side of it, but as I come around I see this long slide that runs probably 75 yards from the top of the structure all the way down to the end of a long street. This thing is huge and is completely made of ice blocks. There are slick ice stairs on the back and people are paying 10 yuan each to climb the dangerous stairs to get to the top. I come around from the back and see these same people climbing on to sleds, like a homemade Flexible Flyer steel railed death trap, and then they slide down this huge ice incline to the street below. Some of these people must have hit 30 miles an hour coming down. When the reach the bottom the ice simply ends and they screech to a stop by hitting uneven pavement. This is one place that due to liability insurance and health and safety ordinances could never exist at the Kansas State Fair. Little kids, 3 years old, are laughingly shoved down the icy hill by overjoyed parents, so they can experience complete and utter terror before being catapulted into a full power asphalt face plant less than 10 seconds later.
Also in the center is an area where for another 10 yuan or so, a group of elderly gentlemen in brightly colored silken wardrobe will carry you around for about 4 seconds, in tiny 3 foot circle, you sitting on wooden chair in a small box on sticks. People happily paid and climbed in. A small orchestra of two guys with Chinese wind instruments and one guy with what looked two pie tins that he banged together played a whiny, and I must say the most annoying tune as the guys moved around in a circle, bouncing the chair in the box up and down as they walked. Everyone seemed to enjoy it despite the relative length of the experience. There were two of these displays, and between them was the freak show. Yes, the traditional freak show, but with a Chinese twist. I didn't go in, but the biggest attraction seemed to be a girl in a bikini who pulled snakes from her nose. That was the featured attraction on huge painted banners that were placed at the two entrances to the tent. I'm not sure if the thrilling part of the attraction was the fact that she pulled live vipers from her nostrils or that she was wearing a bikini in sub freezing temperatures.
I walked around in amazement for about 2 hours, all the while with at least one human being within 3 inches of me, and often closer, at all times...so I headed home. Now here's the hard part, and I'll leave you with this SAT mathematically challenging riddle. Pencils ready? Question 1- Over 200-thousand people leave a Temple Fair and all must leave out of one gate...how many taxi cabs will come by to pick up these stranded fair goers? If you answered zero, you would be correct, but that's another story for another time. By the way, I almost won the big prize at the whack a mole thing, but this little kid next to me cheated by having his Dad reaching in and holding the moles out of the holes so he could hit them, and he got the giant stuffed rat. I'm filing a formal complaint with the CAWAMC (Central Asia Whack A Mole Committee) and I hope hear something in a couple weeks
