Life in Beijing- the Indian way :): Year of the Tiger!!

We’ve come a full circle. It’s been a year in the Jing. Last year we missed the Chinese New Year, so we were looking forward to enjoy the celebrations this year.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the Year of 2010 is the Year of the Tiger.

New Year’s also beginning of spring and people celebrate the Spring Festival as the New Year. People wear red since red is an auspicious color and is considered lucky. Most doors will contain paper cut designs with Chinese characters of “luck” or “happiness”.

It's a major event with families getting together to make dumplings and spending time together. The celebrations go on for about fifteen days and so do the fireworks.

During the holidays, we visited Dongyue Temple to see the temple fair. The temple fair hosts many folk performances and also ethnic culture shows. It’s a typical fair where you can play games and buy candies, colorful balloons and toys. It’s worth a visit to watch people enjoying themselves welcoming spring.
Take subway Line 2 and get off at Chaoyangmen to get to the temple.

This month we tried out two restaurants:
Mayke Ame (Tibetan restaurant)
http://en.makyeame.cn/newEbiz1/EbizPortalFG/portal/html/liansuodian.html?ProgramShow_ProgramID=c373e913ce2156728f7b3fa731e85f2f
We ordered the barbecued lamb with veggies, butter chicken, mashed potato balls stuffed with yoghurt in tomato sauce and Tibetan bread.
The food’s pretty good. Tibetan folk dancers and singers perform while your having dinner. Dinner for two costs about 170-200RMB

Afunti
A Xinjiang cuisine restaurant, a good choice for early dinner. Enjoy chuan while watching traditional xinjiang folk dances. We also won a bottle of Xinjiang Rose wine, which the hostess mentioned is said to make the women more beautiful and then men more powerful (ahem!) :-)

It’s also the Lantern festival this weekend…Looking forward to see the Lanterns lit up at Qianmen.