Shanghai: Longhua Temple Fair

The third day of third month of Chinese lunar calender is the traditional temple fair day. It was sunny day, my last day of Shanghai Xian tour, I couldn’t help to take my camera and go to the Shanghai Longhua Temple Fair. Shanghai Longhua Temple Fair is one of the oldest traditional temple fairs that still remains today in eastern China. It is a comprehensive and unique temple fair of Shanghai culture that combines which goods market, folk belief and folk entertainment activity together. It not only has a great influence on Shanghai area, but also takes a profound and lasting effects on the Yangtze River Delta region.

With Longhua Temple as the center, Longhua Temple Fair mainly spread in the corridor area where with north to Maogong Bridge, Longhua Road and south to the junction of Zhongshan Road and Tianyao Bridge Road. Nowadays, the temple fair location is the Longhua Street, Xuhui District, which is one of the most developed districts in Shanghai.

In the pedestrian street in front of Longhua Temple, various characterized stores lined up, some are making dough figures, some are paper cutting, some for perfume satchel. Egg decorating, seal cutting, craft umbrella, Chinese knot, Pearl string, cotton candy etc surged into my eyes. But what attracts me most is the folk performance from all over the country on the big stage.

Every year, the tourist activity will attract as many as 5,000,000 visitors. Temple fair is a common celebrating activity in China’s Spring Festival. In Xian tour, usually you would see a temple fair of Qin (the abbreviation of shaanxi Province) flavor.