Welcome to the Year of The Horse! (Or Year of The "Whores" as BBC accidentally put it - darn that spellcheck.)
We weren't really sure if we'd go at all, since the event wasn't getting the best reviews. Plus it was $12/adult, which is a little pricy (and the website says we'll all get a free gift, but no one did). You can see before you even get in that there aren't a lot of tents exactly.
Still pretty cool looking though. We decided to go in. We want these types of things to come back year after year, so thought we'd support it - even in its infancy.
Oddly, the thing would start at noon, but the shows wouldn't start until 3. I have no idea what the heck you would have done with yourself if you had come at noon, particularly after spending 20 minutes (tops) walking around the thing (well, I suppose you'd write a bad review). Here was the food offered: Chinese food (3 plates to choose from for $8), kettle corn, and funnel cake/caramel apples (which had the longest lines).
The "handmade crafts" were housed in three tents.
Luckily, we were there for the "lanterns," which are more like floats, but I guess are more lantern-like because they light up from inside (once it gets dark). The first lantern you come to is the weirdest one of all. Christmas has nothing to do with the Chinese New Year (nor does the Christmas tree - any Chinese that celebrate Christmas do it at the same time everyone else does), and if that wasn't odd enough, what the heck was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs doing there? Check out how creepy this was during the day vs how welcoming it was at night. Weird. If any of you have the explanation for this (other than it just being a shout-out to Americans & American kids who like Christmas and Disney), send it along.
There were a couple of lanterns that would let you put money into a slot and a money tree would shake - supposedly you had just given yourself good luck. We hoped our $12 entrance fee could be applied to that.
Oddly, there were also basketball shooting machines you could put $5 into and blow some time and more money (we never saw anyone on these things). It was a really strange mishmash of stuff.
The lanterns themselves were pretty kitschy, but honestly, exactly what I was expecting. You'll note my sister has decided to move to Arizona (from the east coast) - that's her hanging with the God of Job and Salary. Michael seems content.
Even better were the write-ups, which were sooOOoo Chinese-converted-to-English that they were fun to read. They were probably the best part of the whole thing. Injusticiablything? Prower?
These lily's were pretty cool too.
Then we sat in the grass to catch a couple of shows. There seemed to be one troupe of about 10 people (most caucasian) who performed every act. They were trying their darndest, and had to repeat shows over and over, so no offense to their efforts, but it was like watching a recital. A recital with absolutely no budget.
The lion was pretty cool (even when it was twerking), but I couldn't believe it when they suggested people put either US or Canadian dollars in red envelopes and feed it to the lion for good luck. Yeah, for the lion...
Some people went for the extra luck.
I was surprised you could put a wish on the wishing tree for free.
After about an hour, we headed back out and got a beverage from a local business (inside was $3 for a Pepsi - I don't think so), waiting for the sun to go down so we could go back in and see everything lit up. The good news was that everything was pretty cool at night. We were glad we waited it out.
The bad news was that it got cold! We had wanted to watch a few more shows but ended up running around the whole thing to catch all the lanterns lit up and then booked it to the car (and the heater). We had fun, but if they decide to do this again next year, they have some work to do.
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