At the end of the day, the most striking thing about the temple fair was how it American it felt. Other than the fact that all of the signs were in Chinese, I probably could have found a county fair somewhere in California that would have been a near-perfect substitute for the New Years activity.

Let me back up a moment. Starting on Sunday, Beijing has been inundated with New Years celebrations. Monday was the first day of Chunjie 春节, literally “spring festival”, or more well known in the US as Chinese New Year. Everything about Chunjie makes your average American New Year celebration look like a group of Northwestern students the night before a midterm. Fireworks and firecrackers literally go off nonstop for days, people have abandoned Beijing to see their family elsewhere, stores are closed, feasts are consumed, and most importantly, the sky is weirdly blue.

In order to get in on some of the cultural activities, our class went to the Ditan Temple Fair a couple days after the start of the year of the dragon. It seemed like everyone was there – you could barely walk down the aisles without pushing against someone. There were decorations, games, concessions, and souvenirs, all commemorating the new year.

But really, outside of the connection to the most important national holiday, it felt so…American. The only thing there seemed to be to really do at Ditan was spend money – and very large amounts. The carnival games were hard to win, the food wasn’t great, none of the souvenirs seemed to have any purpose, and there were so many people. It reminded me of your average day at a theme park, minus the rides and with the added bonus of winter.

In a sense, though, that seems to be a theme here – China and the United States are freakishly similar. Americans are so quick to paint China as the “other” in any given situation or criticize the country based on very little actual knowledge, so it is nice to add the temple fair to the list of things I can point out to Americans and say: “they’re the same.”