Year of the Dog - Lunar Market

the year of the dog has arrived, and just like all the previous chinese new year, the few days preceding the big day will see various venues in the city organizing different scale of lunar market where one sees rows of stores, selling not only flowers, plantings appropriate for the festive season, but also of goods from all trades.

well, that was what it used to be...

while haven't been to one of these markets for a long time since we were normally travelling out of the city for the past few years, this year we stayed, and decided to take a walk at the largest venue of all, the Victoria Park Lunar Market at Causeway Bay.

due to the large crowds, visitors were advised to move in one direction only, though you still occasionally see some people pushing thru in the totally opposite direction, and god knows what they were trying to do as it were already difficult enough to move along the current, think about moving AGAINST the current!

were very enthusiastic at first, maybe it's the sight of the crowd, or it was the noise generated, laughters, chit-chats, screams, hysterical screams, and more hysterical screams! but after walking down the 1st rows of store, which took about 30 mins, it felt that there was somthing terribly wrong. there was a lack of variety of the goods they were selling. about 80% of the stores were selling air filled ballons, cartoon figures, then there were stuffed cartoon toys, closely resembling some japanese or american cartoon characters, but were in fact, locally designed, and definitely lacked originality. stalls after stalls, they were still selling similar stuff with little variation, what was happening? right, there's nothing wrong in making a few dollars during such event, but where's the entrepreneurship, novelty, and courage to try out something different, something new?

there was this stall which we believed was organized by or affiliated to the local architect's institute, and what they were selling were, T-shirts and yes, you guessed it, air-filled ballons. at least what they set themselves apart from the rest was that the graphic were designed by themselves and not just extracted from somewhere, but still very disappointing. and what's worrying was that they were cutting down their price quite early in the night, definitely inspirational for the architects.

perhaps the only consolation was that there were a few stalls, quietly tucked away, selling some traditional chinese paper cuts, which were nice, and gave a fresh breath of life.