Lantern Festival lights up Beijing.

Posted by Richard Spencer, The Telegraph,  21 February 21,  2008

It is on nights like tonight (Lantern Festival) that you realise why you so often see historical notes to Chinese monuments saying this or that temple or palace “was built in 1392 and rebuilt in 1543 and again in 1745 after being burned by fire”.

A Chinese woman prepares a lantern for the festival

Ourselves, we stuck to sparklers in our courtyard, and very picturesque they were too. I like fireworks as much as the next man but I didn’t like to think of the public liability consequences of a foreigner burning down a couple of square miles of protected hutongs.

A young boy admires an Olympic-themed lantern

Shame to think that as of tomorrow it’ll all be over for another year. Traffic, delightfully light in the last couple of weeks, will be back to its normal self as of 6.55 am. And all we have to look forward to are those blessed Olympics.

The Olympic logo projected onto the Yongdingmen Gate

Posted by Richard Spencer on 21 Feb 2008 at 12:59