Shanghai Shanghai II - The Lantern Festival etc

Yesterday was the lantern festival, the last day of the Spring festival and a full moon night. My textbook lessons had described it as a night where people walk the streets carrying lanterns, hang lanterns on their houses, look at the full moon and eat tangyuan- sweet glutinous rice dumplings which are round like the moon and symbolise reunions or something like that!

Step out of the textbook and into real China, and just hanging out in random areas you would have practically zilch chance of seeing people walking round with lanterns, not see any decorated houses (people live in apartment blocks now anyway), possibly see a few moon gazers, and possibly find an eatery serving tangyuan. But Shanghai has a special district where lanterns are hung up- the restored part of the 'old town'- none of it is actually old, but is a garden/ bazaar area with traditional Chinese buildings and lanes, chock a block with chinese-y nick nacks, souvenirs, and expensive dumpling vendors (for the famous Shanghai xiao long bao). It was extremely crowded when we visited the first time and a bit of a nightmare actually!
When we went back there on full moon evening we found that the whole new-old-town was gated off and you had to pay 50Y to get in, just to wander around the shops area! We could see in and see some of the lanterns over the streets, they were impressive but they weren't candle lanterns or old style. Outside that area there were also lots of red lanterns hanging up along the streets immediately around the new-old-town, so we contented ourselves with looking at that.

As for families wandering round with lanterns, well the 'lanterns' are not the romantic paper ones I imagined, the trend was for battery operated plastic light up toys of all kinds, most of which sung some sort of high pitched tune. They were quite simply HIDEOUS!
You could see the full moon above the town, and we were probably not the only ones who noticed it, but we didn't actually see people selling yuanxiao outside the paid area. What we did see being vended, on market tables in the middle of the street were red new years undies, for men women and kids. You could get ones with little gold rats, the happiness symbol, etc. Quite amusing!

What was fun was the hordes of people, perhaps without lanterns, but all just wandering about watching the 'renao' (hot and noisy). Some, clearly out of towners- probably migrant workers etc, looked as bedazzled as us! When it gets crowded in China it gets really crowded!! There were also fireworks going off and light displays (with lots of advertising) on some of the buildings.