Kite festival at Weifang, Shandong

kite in the sky

April 25, 26, 2009

The Foreign Teachers Association of Shandong University took us on a trip to visit Weifang, Shandong. Weifang is about 2 1/2 hours east of Jinan with population of 8 million, and areas slightly larger than Jinan. All 8 BYU China Teachers and several other foreign teachers from the US, Russia, Japan and Israel participated. The tour bus came to our bus stop to pick us up. The meals, admission tickets and English tour guide were provided. The 2 Japanese teachers had a private tour guide. We stayed at a 4-star hotel, called Fanhai Ocean Hotel. Excel for the hard mattress, it was a very nice hotel. The dinner was very good, but the breakfast buffet was fabulous. We each paid 150 yuan for the trip and SDU picked up the rest for us.

A team from Beijing preparing their kite for the competition

The kingdom of kite in China - Weifang, Shandong is well-known all over the world because the kite sports are held from 20th to 25th April every year since 1984, which attracts thousands of Kite Flyers from all over China and kite enthusiasts from around the world. This year, 2009, about 110 teams and 900 people participated in this International Kites Competition.