Tomb-sweeping day and barbacue

  Last week was here in China the "Tomb - sweeping day " . This festival is called Ching Ming or Qingming , usually held on the 15th day of the spring equinox, which occurs normally  on April 4th or 5th , and it's a day when the chinese honors the ancestors.

   This particular day is the day when people go to visit the graves of relatives and clean them, offering food to ancestors and if you ever noticed , this the day that the Chinese burn this red paper representing money, with which according to tradition to send money to the dead people. These days are usually holidays in China , Macau, Hong Kong and Taiwan so many people these days travel to their hometowns to visit their ancestor with their family.

    This tradition is similar to the spanish tradition or the western tradition when we visit the deceased in late October, but with some differences as I said. We, as perfect no-chinese thought that could be a great idea to have a barbecue in a park here in Shanghai, at least to breath some real air, not the polluted one from the city, and also because we couldn't visit other cities due to holidays, you know, is when more people move in China, and it's really crazy to take a train those days. Some Chinese friends said it was not a good idea because many people would be there because the holidays, and plus, it was a really nice day to enjoy outside.

   At first it seemed that the barbecue was not going to be held,but finally it was really a nice day, because the weather was good, the food also and the people better, coming from Spain, Denmark, Germany, Switzerlandm China, Italy, Korea, United States...And we ha more people that couldn't come, but it was really nice.

   In the last minute of Saturday afternoon we changed the location for the barbecue, from Gucun Park, next to the city, to Gongqing Forest Park, where Shanghai ends because the sea is the next thing you will find. The good thing about this park, as its name says, is that is a forest, so it's an immense place. The worst thing is that the barbecue area is very small, and that instead of a barbecue area it was like a battlefield.

Battlefield: Gongqing Park    When we arrived we were hanging around the barbecue area to see where we could stay, but it was impossible, and in the second try we found one of these, how to call them..."tents"? which was where people could put their stuff and eat. We were there for20 minutes until the guard keeper came and told us that we need to move because we hand't paid. We thought we were lucky but our stolen spot was conquered by the real owners (2 girls), and although we asked them to share the spot they refused. But we did not go too far, and we stayed between two od the tents, which was one of the best decisions we made.

The Barbecue team strikes BACK!                      The Barbecue team strikes BACK!

   That day we experience by ourselves what is really being Chinese, as we were in the middle of everything, we were the only foreigners, smoke, people, trash, screaming, etc.. Totally crazy, but after a while we got used and we integrate further into the environment that was intoxicating our lungs. We, like good novices, took a ball to play football, but of course, where we were going to play something if we could not even move from the outskirts because there were too many people?

Spanish Power!

    If we talk about the park you can say it was an amazing place, vegetation, rivers, many types of activities,  from paintball, to zip lines, boats, places to fly kites, amusement park and even a train inside the park. One of the best things in this park and what everyone without exception was agree was about the smell, nature, vegetation, anything that does not smell in the center of Shanghai, where the most characteristic smell that you can get is from baozì (typical buns stuffed with meat).
 

   We couldn't celebrate Hanami like in Japan, but it was something similar, despite being at 10,000 times faster than Japan, with incredible stress, even people with a barbecue in the bushes, but it was a great day, I hope that soon we can repeat.

Dusk