Page 66 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guide - Beijing

64 ❯❯ The Top 10 of Everything

Festivals and Events

Fireworks and traditional dances heralding Chinese New Year
International Labor Day
Chinese New Year
1 4
Three days from the 1st day
May 1
of the 1st moon, usually late Jan Labor Day is celebrated with a three-
or early Feb day holiday, which marks the start of
Also known as Spring Festival, the domestic travel season. Shops,
Beijing’s favorite holiday sees offices, and other businesses close
fireworks let off night and day for the entire holiday, and often for a
across the city, plus temple fairs whole week. Don’t plan on doing any
with stilt-walkers, acrobats, and out-of-town travel during this time.
fortune-tellers. Families make
Dragon Boat
jiaozi (dumplings) together 5
and exchange gifts, then Festival (Duanwu
the adults watch the Jie)
annual Spring Festival The 5th day of the 5th lunar
Gala on television. month (early Jun)
Drums thunder as dragon-
Lantern
2 top honors. The festival
headed craft compete for
Festival
The 15th day of the lunar remembers the honest
calendar (end of Feb) official, Qu Yuan, who drowned
This festival marks the himself 2,500 years ago after
end of the 15-day Spring Lantern banish ment from the court of
Festival celebrations. Festival the Duke of Chu. Citizens threw
Lanterns bearing auspicious rice cakes into the water to
characters or in the shape of distract the fish from nibbling on his
animals are hung everywhere. It body, hence the wholesale consump-
is also a time for eating the sticky tion of these delicacies on this date.
rice balls known as yuanxiao.
Dragon Boat Festival competition
Tomb-Sweeping
3
Festival (Qing Ming)
Apr 5, but Apr 4 in leap years
On this public holiday, Chinese
families visit their ancestors’ graves
to tidy them up, make offerings of
snacks and alcohol, and burn
incense and paper money.
Eyewitness Travel – Top 10 series LAYERS PRINTED:
Two-column, 8.5pt grid “UK” LAYER
(SourceReport v.1.9)
064-065_Top_10_Beijing.indd 64 27/06/2017 14:32
Date 24th June 2015
Size 100mm x 191mm