Two to Tango: The Lantern Festival

Sunday turned out to be a day of adventure. Although the plan had been that after church we’d come back and rest, we ended up navigating our way through the heart of Nanjing’s Confucius Temple.

Getting to Church is about an hour metro trip from our school. We meet on the second floor of a snazzy hotel. The hotel refers to us as the “BYU group,” since they apparently can’t post anything having to do with a church. The branch is basically made up of English teachers. There’s us, a large China Horizons group, and several other freelance teachers. One member of the branch actually teaches at our same school.

During Relief Society, one of the sisters announced that the lantern festival would be that night at the Confucius temple. (The lantern festival is the official end of the Chinese New Year). Maddie, Morgan, Krista, Heather, and Jenna stared me down as if to say “we MUST go to that!” Since it was the chance of a lifetime, we decided to go.

I had one of the sisters tell me what metro stop to get off at and we headed out. I was excited, but I had two concerns: 1. I was wearing weird Chinese tights that, although warm, were falling off me. And 2. I had high heels on. But going back to the school for a change of clothes was out of the question, so I just decided to deal with it.

Getting to the right metro stop ended up being quite the debacle. The stop I had gotten from the sister at the branch didn’t match any of the stops at the token station. We played a serious round of charades with the metro workers until Soren finally got one of them to come over to a token station to help us figure out where we were going.

When we finally got there, we emerged from the metro and got some food. I shimmied out of my tights, since they were half way down my thighs and Soren put them in his jacket (I think I gave a few Chinese girls a good scare during this process). It was Soren’s birthday, and he was determined to get some chicken feet to nibble on. He was really enjoying them, but loved me enough to let me have a quick bite. After filling our stomachs, we entered the flow of Asians heading toward the temple.

Soren's birthday treat

The chicken foot

Me trying a bit

Nom nom nom

The temple was in the center of a whole temple-area thing. It was a neat place filled with shops, lanterns, dragon decorations, and lots and lots of people. We took pictures of the things around us, but the Chinese people took pictures of us. One guy finally worked up the courage and asked to take a picture with us. We agreed and for the next 45 minutes we were stuck there taking pictures with random Chinese people. Some just wanted pictures with me and Maddie (the blondes), some just wanted pictures with Soren (the tall handsome man), and some didn’t care who they got their picture taken with so long as they were white. It was hilarious.

Unfortunately, my feet had started killing me at this point. I was wearing comfortable wedges, but I had been on my feet for about 3 hours, and I knew I had several more hours to go. I tried to maintain a positive attitude, but I was desperate for a place to sit down.

We tried KFC, but there were NO available seats. We were able to snag one chair and we took turns sitting in it as we ate.

We hung around for a few more hours and finally found some empty “seats” on a round about. It was a cool festival—we even saw a couple Tangled-style lanterns go up. One fun thing about the lantern festival was seeing all of the fun masks people were wearing. Maddie bought a cute one, but the rest of us were content just looking at them. While we were sitting on the roundabout, however, a few Chinese men approached me with a mask. They indicated that they wanted me to put the mask on, so I did. Why not? The men then took a few pictures with me. That started it all over again, and we were swept into another photo shoot. This one didn’t last as long.

The man who gave me the mask eventually approached me again, and I took it off to give back to him. He smiled and shook his hand, indicating that he didn’t want it back and that I could keep it. It wasn’t as cute as Maddie’s, but hey, it was free!

Getting back to the school was really painful for me. Soren was a dear and gave me a piggy back for a little bit.

Other than that, it was a wonderfully successful outing and lots of fun. For Soren, it was a birthday he’ll never forget.