Beijing Pop Festival will be held in Chaoyang Park on Sept. 8 and Sept. 9. Don’t let the name fool you, the festival is nothing “pop” but everything “Rock n’ Roll”.
This year’s line up is especially awesome. Including two of my personal favorites, Wan Xiaoli (万晓利）and Nin Inch Nails. Wan Xiaoli’s new album got a lot softer than before, a little bit too commercial for my taste. Let’s see if he can still rock this time. Nine Inch Nail’s “Closer” and “Hurt” have long been on my top rated playlist. I am excited to see them in person this time. So if you are in Beijing for the weekend, head to Chaoyang Park and enjoy the best music event of the year.
Happy Valley Theme Park opened since summer 2006. This summer the park offers a discounted Night admission. Visitors can enjoy perfomances and parades from 7pm till 10 pm. The park consists of six themed regions respectively named “Bay Forrest”, “Atlantis”, “the Lost Maya”, “Aegean Harbor”, “Shangri-La” and “Kingdom of Ants”. The chief manager of Beijing “Happy Valley”, Gao Jun, says visitors can have fun while learning about ecology, culture and history of the world through the parks’ exhibits which include buildings, sculptures, gardens, murals, performances and games.
This park will be the second theme park opened by the OCT Group. The first “Happy Valley” has been successfully running for years in Shenzhen in south China’s Guangdong Province. Meanwhile, the group plans on building two more “Happy Valleys” in Shanghai and Chengdu.
Happy Valley Beijing is located near southeast 4th ring road at the Beijing-Shenyang Highway entrance. Telephone: 010-67201818
Most Chinese remember being told this romantic tragedy when they were children on Qixi, or the Seventh Night Festival, which falls on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month, which is usually in early August. This year it falls on Sunday, August 19.
If it rains heavily on that night, some elderly Chinese will say it is because Zhinu, or the Weaving Maid, is crying on the day she met her husband Niulang, or the Cowherd, on the Milky Way.
According to the Chinese lore, a cowherd lived with his elder brother and sister-in-law who disliked and abused him, that he was forced to leave home with only an old cow for company. The cow, however, was a former god who had violated imperial rules and was sent to earth in bovine form. One day the cow led the cowherd to a lake where fairies took a bath on earth. Among them was a weaving maid, the most beautiful fairy and a skilled seamstress. The two fell in love at first sight. They ignored Heaven’s strict rules and were soon secretly married. They had a son and a daughter and their happy life was held up as an example for hundreds of years in China. Yet in the eyes of the Jade Emperor, the Supreme Deity in Taoism, marriage between a mortal and fairy was strictly forbidden. He sent the empress to fetch the weaving maid. The cowherd grew desperate when he discovered the weaving maid had been taken back to heaven. Driven by the cowherd’s misery, the cow told him to turn its hide into a pair of shoes after it died. The magic shoes whisked the cowherd, who carried his two children in baskets strung from a shoulder pole, off on a chase after the empress. The pursuit enraged the empress, who took her hairpin and slashed it across the sky creating the Milky Way which separated husband from wife. The cowherd was stopped by the surging river. But all was not lost as magpies, moved by their love and devotion, agreed to let them meet one day (on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month) each year. All the magpies in the world, according to lore, gather on that day to form a bridge spanning the Milky Way so the lovers can reunite. Even the Jade Emperor was touched, and allowed them to meet once a year on the seventh night of the seventh month. (more…)