Last week we went to a local festival celebrating Chinese New Year, held in Beishi (Laobei:老北) Market. Beishi Market was originated in 1636, started as market in 1921. This area has 400 years of history and it is known as one of the 10 bustling markets in China. This area has many commercial and cultural buildings related to art and multi-ethnic cultures such as Manchurian, Mongolian, Xibo, Tibetan, and Han. The festival will be ongoing from February until March, and the lighted area starts at 5pm every day. We arrived at the festival around 5:30pm and enjoyed for about 2 hours.

If you take a taxi, please ask for “老北市” in Shenyang. There was no fee to enter the market.

Winter in Shenyang is always so cold (-10℃、 14°F）.. but you got to go if you want to enjoy and experience new things!! Please don’t forget to bring some hand warmers. 🙂

I think there were several entrances, but when we came with a taxi, the driver dropped us off here. It was very easy to see and walk around the festival.

She asked me to take a picture with this dragon statue.

There were many of those huge drums at the festival that you can play freely.

This is called a “Sugar Painting,” which is one of the Chinese traditional folk arts. I wrote about sugar paintings in a past blog. This time she got a dragon in celebration of 2024 being the year of the dragon.

This is my daughters’ favorite Chinese sweet!

The youngest got a sun flower. 🌻

In the market area, there are many streets where different shops and cultural booths are lined up. It is actually fun even just walking around the market.

We bought this hat at the market. This red and the flower design is a traditional pattern in Northern China. There were people also wearing winter jackets with the same pattern.

I thought this was ice cream when I first saw it. But it was actually a type of sweet that includes hot glutinous rice with some beans and sweet Chinese dates (Jujube) on top of an ice cream cone. There were also some chocolate sprinkles.

Red beans and Chinese dates (Jujube) that were on my “ice cream.” It was very cold outside too so the hot ice cream was actually a great idea!

My daughter liked this sweet!

It was about $1 each.

We enjoyed it a lot!

These are tornado potatoes. We were already at a different area, but my daughter wanted to buy this potato so much, so we went back to this store and bought it, hehe. It was good!

I just loved the festive vibes and hearing sounds of drums everywhere. There were many food and drink stands, and culture-related shops and of course it was amazing to see the temples.

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