Liede Village banquet of hundreds of tables

900 years ago a group of people moved to Guangzhou from other parts of the province and settled close to the Pearl River. The Liede Village started to form.

Fast forwarding 900 years the city of Guangzhou is spreading and being modernized. The old village is demolished and new residential buildings are build. The old villagers got new apartments distributed to them from these new buildings on their land, many even 10 or more apartments.

Later shopping malls and business centers were build on the Liede Villagers land as well, a share of this income is distributed to the villagers, more than 50 000 CNY per year. No wonder Liede Village is called the riches Village in Guangzhou!

But old traditions aren’t forgotten! New family temples were built for the Li, Lin, Liang and Mai clans. Each year each of the hold a magnificent banquet, the biggest being the Li Clan with more than 500 people.

Yesterday we got to take part in the celebration of the Lin clan and it was an amazing experience. My company Expat Chinese hosted the event together with Banana Tour and 16 foreign and Chinese friends joined us.

The event started with lion dance performance followed by dragon dance and kungfu shows. Everyone gathered in front of the Lin Clan Tenple to watch the one hour show.

After the show it was time for dinner! Among three hundred tables we found our two tables and the dishes started to roll in one after another.

Each table seemed to have enough food to feed much more than just 10 people seated around it. We enjoyed local dishes of goose, chocked, pork, shrimp, vegetables, sea food and dessert. Soft drinks, apple vinegar cider and rice wine were served at every table as well.

Participating in this event was such an unique experience because usually only the family members and relatives were invited. Thank you Sissi from Banana Tour to make it happen!