2022-09-10 Mid-Autumn in Nansha

Nansha

We still didn’t want to travel to far for the Mid-Autumn holiday, so we decided to go to Nansha Tianhou Temple, and had a look of the future center of the great bay area. The streets were empty as we walked out of the subway, until we saw a lot of people camping beneath a bridge by the river.

River Village Street

In the evening of the Mid-Autumn, we got into the “River Village Street” on our way to the Tianhou Temple. It was just those tourism streets built with antique styles which exists in every city. However it had a special holiday atomsphere with all the lanterns hanging above. We realized many kids were lifting lanterns that seemed to be customized, so we traced them back to the place we could make our own.

When we arrived the entrance of the Tianhou Temple area, the park started to limit the visitors inside and stopped to let people enter. The road was also packed with people, so it seemed people were not that worried about COVID very much.

Midnight by the River

We walked along the river back to the hotel. The riverside in the evening was quite lively, which was like a different world than in the morning.

There were all kinds of vendors in the street market by the river. We bought some food and beer, and sat on the rocks by the water. The air finally cooled down a little bit in the evening. It had been a long while since last time I stayed outside past midnight.

Tianhou Temple

The Tianhou Temple is dedicated to the Goddess Mazu, who was usesd to be a woman named “Lin Mo”. There stood a tall statue of Mazu in the temple square, and she looked over the Lingding Bay where Wen Tianxiang once famously passed by.

There is a small area of beach by the river or sea outside the Tianhou Temple, which is one of the legendary beaches of Guangzhou. There were more people in the beach than in the temple.