Following the shocking Shanghai Bund stampede on New Year’s Eve 2014, authorities across the country are considering halting Spring Festival activities over safety concerns.
Shanghai has already banned several public celebrations such as the Yuyuan Lantern Festival and the Guyi lantern festival. Now the Hangzhou Lingyin temple has followed suit, banning activities for the Laba festival, a 1,500-year-old Buddhist festival held on the 8th day of the 12th month of the lunar calendar. On this day it is traditional to eat congee and in previous years, the temple would prepare and serve free congee to visitors.
The activity normally attracts around 30,000 attendees, but this year has been considered too dangerous.
Other cancellations have been proposed drawing harsh criticism from residents citing lazy ‘one-size –fits-all’ ruling.
Activities in other parts of the country such as Jilin will go ahead as planned.
Source: Tencent
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Keywords: Local Governments across the Country Consider Cancelling Spring Festival Activities
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The root cause of this problem was that several officials were sacked from their positions following the New Year's Stampedes. So instead of having celebrations, they decided to take it out on the public by just playing everything safe.
Jan 29, 2015 16:46 Report Abuse
Unofficial stand of government officials, 'Great, I can use the freed up time to collect more new year hongbaos. See, westerners aren't the only ones who know about positive thinking. We chinese do it the chinese way! We are modernised! And when we take over your countries you'll know our way is the right way!'
Jan 29, 2015 10:39 Report Abuse
More innovative thinking by the world's largest economy. Instead of providing more adequate safety measures and education to the public, let's just ban everything!
Jan 28, 2015 23:55 Report Abuse
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