Preparations for Christmas Eve

On the way home this evening from the Russian Royal Ballet, we walked through the central business district where "preparations" were underway for Christmas Eve. And interesting phenomena has developed in Chengdu over the past few years. Massive numbers of people go to the central business district and beat on each other with air inflated bats. While the bats come in a variety of shapes and colors, the predominate ones are like baseball bats with red-white-and-blue stars and stripes. Below some young people are buying their bats for tomorrow evening.

No one seems to know why this tradition started or what it means. Someone asked if we did it in America. Some think the bats are red-white-and-blue because they think the idea started in America. Anyway, the massive crowds are a concern of the government and the police. The tell me there will be large numbers of police on the streets tomorrow night along with 150,000+ people. You can see pictures from a previous year on ImageEvent. I'll report more after the event.