China's Palace Museum, also known as the Forbidden City, is staging an exhibition of paintings by renowned Chinese masters, many of which are shown to the public for the first time.

The Jan. 28 - Apr. 23 exhibition shows 89 masterpieces of 42 famous Chinese painters, including Wu Changshuo, Qi Baishi, Zhang Daqian and Xu Beihong, depicting natural scenery, figures, flowers and birds.

The venue of the exhibition is the newly-renovated Wuying Palace, which was destroyed by fire during the Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911) and had been renovated for nine times since the Palace Museum was founded in 1925.

With tremendous ideological and social changes in the first half of the 20th century, Chinese painting has become a major carrier to record the great transformation as some painters stick to the traditional way of drawing and others turn to western techniques.

On the sidelines of the exhibition, academic workshops will be held by the ancient book and painting study center of the Palace Museum. (Editor: Ling Zhu)

  Foreigners in Beijing enjoy temple fairs

The Ditan fair on Tuesday, the third day of the Year of the Dog, was of course breathtakingly crowded, as some Beijing residents ended their family reunions and started going on family outings for fun.

"I don't care about the hustle and bustle because there are always a lot of people in China," said Daniel, "the most important is, it's nice to see happy faces and a good time to be with family or girlfriends."

As an important part of the Spring Festival, temple fairs in Beijing unfold with much fanfare this year from Jan. 28, the last day of the Year of the Rooster, through Feb. 4, when Chinese are supposed to summon up the energy to start work again.

Roy Kesey, a U.S. writer who currently lives in Beijing, bought his kids two pinwheels at the Ditan temple fair. Kesey described the pinwheels in a column as something "make 'clickety' sounds that did not seem so loud there in the throng but that now, at home, are woodpeckers pecking churlishly at the backs of our heads", but he said the temple fair "delighted" his kids Tom and Chloe.

Kesey said visitors at the temple fair "looked up at Tom riding on my shoulders, and at Chloe riding on my wife's, and smiled, and took a picture of us, because a foreigner made puffy by holiday food and then made tall by an otherwise thin foreign child made likewise puffy by a bright snowsuit is an amusing thing".

Andy from Britain who works as an editor in Beijing said, "The really best thing about temple fairs is the children-watching. They just run around on sugar-highs, kicking, screaming and laughing. And sometimes if you try you can almost remember that feeling from your own childhood."

"If you are something of a cynical teenager then a temple fair is really outdated and dull, but if you are an impressionable child or an easygoing adult, you soon recognize and appreciate that there's a kind of innocent pleasure to a temple fair," said Andy who has been to Ditan and Baiyunguan temple fairs a couple of times each.

"You can enjoy the ''good clean fun' if you just adopt the correct attitude: become 8 years old again, just once a year," he said.

Andy said he loves watching local opera performances by local opera troupes at temple fairs in Beijing as the performances are more enjoyable and colorful in real life than on TV.

Foreigners also join Chinese in observing "superstitions". At 6a.m. Tuesday morning, John and three other U.S. tourists joined the long queue of more than 100 meters at the gate of the Baiyunguan temple fair, only wish to touch a stone monkey carved on the wall of the Baiyunguan, the largest Taoist architectural complex in southwest Beijing. It is said that the touch can bring an auspicious new year.

Brian and Jenny, young lovers from Britain now teaching in an international school in Beijing, immersed themselves into the goal-shooting and dart games at the International Temple Fair in east Beijing's Chaoyang Park. They have already won three cuddly bears.

"I find I am really good at these games and I've given all the toy prizes to Jenny," said Brian. His superb "laser-guided throwing skills" stunned the ball-stall runner who complained, "Weare going to run out of toys quite quickly!"

Not satisfied with a mere visiting role, many foreigners joined performing troupes in giving Beijing temple fairs a Western flavor.

At the Chaoyang Park, such foreign entertainment groups as a British wildcat band, a Russian dancing group and a Spanish magic group energetically displayed their own arts to the Chinese visitors.

From GOV.cn