When I ordered lunch from Sherpa’s last week I received an invitation for the Christmas market at Wending Lu. The invitation looked promising, so tonight we decided to check it out with Scott. However, it turned out to be a big disappointment.
First of all there were hardly any people when we were there around 6:30 PM. There were a couple of Christmas houses at the entrance and inside the furniture mall, but there were no customers at all and they were too far spread out. The only people we saw were at the (very) small ice skating at the side of the market. Even though it was too small to really skate around and the music was not particularly Christmas like (dance/house music…) , I still wanted to give skating a try for a few minutes to show it to Scott. But I could only rent skates for RMB 150 for two hours, which was both a bit too long and too expensive for this small area.
But Scott did not care, because he found some snow next to the ice skating place and he loved playing in it. He was laughing loudly when he could throw snow at me and my dad. We also found a Santa Claus walking around, but when I wanted to take a picture of him he wanted me to pay him! I could not believe it, a Santa at a Christmas market who wants to be paid if people take a picture of him? China is really getting too commercial. Or maybe the Santa Claus wanted to keep the money himself (he wanted only RMB 5)?
If you plan to visit the market (which will remain open until Thursday), I would not really advise you to go. It’s rather boring and it lacks a Christmas atmosphere. The idea is great, but as often in China the implementation failed. No Christmas music, the Christmas houses too far spread out, too commercial and not enough marketing so hardly anybody showed up. A missed opportunity.