Let's go fly a kite

[First published May 29, 2015] A few days ago, Ross and I took the kite we bought in Weifang (the nearby city that's the Kite Capital of the World) for its maiden flight. We're really pleased with the kite we bought -- it's a squid.

For more about the kite culture of Weifang, try this interesting article with good pictures. Rather than quote it, I'll just provide the link. We saw a lot of kites in Weifang, unfortunately though, not many that were actually being flown! But we did go to the kite museum and saw a lot of beautiful kites in a beautiful building, pictured above. Kite-making in the area goes back thousands of years. As they explained at the museum, kites were used for military purposes, including psychological warfare and signalling, in ancient China... 

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Kite making suffered under the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards smashed people's priceless antiques, pulled up grass and flowers, because they were "bourgeois elements" and suppressed public recreation of all sorts, including kite flying. Kite makers were either forbidden to make kites or could only make kites with approved revolutionary images on them. Some kite makers resorted to making dragonfly-sized miniature kites so they could keep their skills alive.  (Similarly, the Taliban banned kite flying in Afghanistan during their regime.)

The large kite below left has whistles built into it.  And those little bedroom slippers are in fact a kite!

On our second day in Weifang, we hopped a bus to the outskirts of the city to the exhibition grounds where we hoped to see some serious kite flying going on, even though the competitive portion of the kite festival had ended. (Teams come from all over the world to display and fly their kites here.) The kite flying grounds are at the top of a small mountain, which was a daunting climb for us, especially with Ross's bad knee. At the top, there were some kite vendors and a few kites flying but we could see that there was nothing going on at the stadium.

So we walked around and found a walled theme park of some kind and we paid a few yuan to get inside. Ross decided pretty soon that we were in "Wallyworld."  This was a large, nearly deserted picnic and playground area, full of sad Cold War era kid playground equipment and forlorn little animal garbage cans and a few actual tanks and fighter jets on display. There was a view, since it was on top of a mountain and it would be a fine place for a picnic getaway, and the bushes were in flower but -- nobody was there.  

We walked around and then out again and back down the mountain to the bus stop, trying not to let aching joints and the sense of having wasted half a day cloud over the Big Picture, which is -- hey, we're in China! And it's a beautiful day and we're seeing and learning. 

We also enjoyed Weifang by night. We found a brightly lit walking street and a street market along the riverside. Sorry our night time shots aren't the greatest. The final picture is the Weifang train station which features large dragon kites overhead. A beautiful city and one that I hope we'll visit again -- maybe we'll even see some kites flying!