Cherry blossom trees in Qatar!

I heard about the Chinese Festival at MIA through a brochure passed to me by a co-worker. And even though I had only checked out Doha Time Out a few days ago, there was nothing mentioned about this on the site. Funny, don’t you think?

Regardless, it was crowded enough. Specially on the third day, though that might have to do something with the fact that it was a Friday.

There was a small stage where we saw these young Chinese women performing a dance routine called the “Flower”. I have to say it, it looked more of a fusion of Arabic and Chinese culture than purely Chinese. The bright color of the dress, the way their hands moved, the tone of the music. But maybe that was the point? To show a fusion of both cultures?

It reminded me of the events hosted at Alliance Francaise back at home. One of the songs by StudioNomade was composed on a sitar, for example. So even though the entire song was in French, the instrument is Indian/sub-continentish. Maybe that’s the concept behind these things.

The crowd comprised mostly of foreigners and I just wished that more of the locals would come to an event like this. I can recognize efforts by the government to host events like this but I am unable to understand why the locals are not bothered.

I have never liked flowers, ever (probably because no one has given me one, ever). But I do love cherry blossom trees. There was a line of cherry blossom trees which looked very life-like but oh-so-artificial. Funny how I always thought cherry blossom trees were a part of Japanese culture rather than Chinese culture but whatever!

There were about six stalls or so which show-cased Chinese products, but not Chinese only though (I could see several Arabic coffee pots kept alongside Qatar’s national flag too).

The picture below is a fish model made out of grained Chinese rice!

And then of course, the lanterns. It’s funny how lanterns for me symbolize Chinese culture but when I saw these yesterday I was thinking of the beautiful lamps they have at the souq and how I should really get one of them.

Apart from the food stall called MIA cafe, there were six other ones that offered more or less the same food for more or less the same price. I had dumplings the first day, which were pleasant as compared to the prawns and rice yesterday. And as always there are people at such events who are munching on McDonald’s…

And these were the paintings in those small stalls. I just felt like taking some pictures:

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I had actually decided against it; taking pictures and all. I thought I would write a post without pictures and let your imagination play its part but then I thought pictures speak a thousand words and all that shit.

I wish they would do more of such events, but with more music. It’s been a while since I have heard good live music. But all in all I enjoyed the event (I went twice, right?) but then again I’m always a sucker for events like these.