Temple Fairs: A Beijing Spring Festival Survival Guide

[Updated: Jan 23, 4pm] We have confirmed that all Beijing temple fairs will be canceled due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.

It’s almost Lunar New Year, and many of you are clearing out for warmer and, dare we say it, more salubrious latitudes. It's a fine thing to appreciate the clean air and warm breezes as you blow bong hits from the back of a tuk-tuk racing through the backstreets of Phuket. Those staying in Beijing, however, can look forward to the annual bacchanal of alcohol, explosives, and execrable TV galas. I'm not throwing shade. I'm into any holiday which brings together high proof alcohol and gunpowder. My rule for buying fireworks is if you can’t liberate Taiwan with the amount of firepower you’ve purchased, go back for another round.

There are also temple fairs. The first question everyone must ask themselves before going to a temple fair is, of course, WHY? Yes, they are excellent ways to get in touch with one of the few Beijing traditions which managed to survive the 20th century. Many of the temple fairs in our city have roots which date back to the Ming and Qing eras.

They are also the default activity for the millions of Beijingers who are not in Phuket jumping out of the way of your runaway tuk-tuk of hedonism. Which is probably why most people – no matter how devoted to the idea of temple fairs – react to the possibility of actually going to one with the same mix of fear and gut-level repulsion your average Trump voter might have while attending a Cornell West lecture.

I live a chuan'r stick away from Ditan Park, which is annually one of the largest and busiest fairs in the city. My usual temple fair strategy is to sit on the side of the road drinking high proof alcohol and watching 40,000 idiots try to each park an off-brand mid-level family sedan on the Second Ring Road. But last year, I was convinced by my wife and her family to enter this festival of doom. It was… not as bad as I thought it would be, but then that’s how a close friend recently described his experience with colonic irrigation. 

The first lesson I learned is the most obvious: Go early. We went around 9am mostly because I was told there was a reenactment of a Qing-era imperial sacrifice done on the Altar of the Earth each morning. I’m a rogue historian by profession, and so I may be a trifle nitpicky about these things, but I’m pretty sure the original Qing dynasty version did not include an electric guitar and a shanzhai Marshall stack. I also don’t believe the emperor wore New Balance running shoes. Perhaps a little something to check over in the archives.

While the actual reenactment was something of a letdown, getting there early made the rest of our visit tolerable. I could actually walk through the concourses without feeling like I was caught in a riptide of humanity all holding food impaled on sharp sticks.

Ditan gets the crowds, but it’s far from the only temple fair in Beijing. Going further afield (Yuanmingyuan in Haidian has a decent concourse) can mean fewer crowds. 

There is the hoary Beijing warning about thievery and the Lunar New Year holiday. As any Lao Beijinger will tell you, there is a spike in the incidents of petty crime occurring just before the New Year. Much of it is blamed on out-of-town workers seeking to replace income stolen from them by corrupt bosses or extracted as “fees” from equally corrupt labor recruiters. According to this bit of elitist local lore, the worker than makes up his shortfall with the proceeds from the sale of your iPhone before he heads back to East Chicken Gizzard Village for an annual reunion with spouse and progeny.

I'm usually skeptical of the "outsiders" rant, but the only time I’ve ever had something actually stolen from me in Beijing (as opposed to, say, being left in the back of a taxi cab on the way home from Heaven Supermarket) happened around the Lunar New Year at the Ditan Temple Fair.* In the crush of people, I foolishly had my phone in my back pocket. I felt somebody feeling me up but then was too pinned in to see who or what was happening. In the time it took me to say “Motherf*****” my phone was gone.

So, head to your nearest temple fair. Enjoy the dribbly food and performances. Just remember: Go early. Consider heading out to one of the lesser-visited fairs. And keep an eye on your stuff.

Happy New Year.

*This doesn’t include bicycles. Bicycles don’t count in the city’s crime statistics. You just assume any decent bike you buy is a three-month rental at best.

READ: Usher in the Year of the Rat With Beijing's Top 8 Temple Fairs

Photos: Xinhua