Dinner and a Lantern Festival

There is a new mall near where I live and I noticed a few weeks ago that they are going to be opening a Papa John's Pizza place there. After my Chinese tutoring on Saturday I went over there with Reese to see if Papa John's was open yet... still not open.

Oh well, we found a nice Korean BBQ place there and that was good. Korean BBQ is one of the thing I miss about Dalian. We had a big platter of different kinds of meat to BBQ, some kimchi, and some bibambap (called banfan in China). It was really wonderful, but I ate too much.


Entrance to Ta Zi Shan park

After dinner Reese took me to Ta Zi Shan park where there was an event going on for Lantern Festival, which marks the end of Spring Festival (Chinese New Year).


Me in front of a big display of mechanical dancers and musicians

I had been to Ta Zi Shan before for a team building outing with some of my co-workers before. The place was a lot different now with a lot of displays for different stories about China and about Lantern Festival.


The big tower on the hill all lit up

We walked around and looked at all the displays. Most were made by making shapes with wire and then covered in silk or paper.


A phoenix


Reese in front of an Olympics display

Some of the displays also had motors put into their base so that different objects moved or twirled around.


Some mechanical dancers


A pretty moon lady with lanterns and cranes


A bunch a mechanical pandas on a boat

There were also a lot of vendors selling all kinds of touristy stuff and also selling lots of food. Too bad I ate so much at dinner... Maybe that was a good thing.