Temple fairs are a big part of Lunar New Year’s celebrations in Beijing. So we walked up to take a look at the celebrations in the Beijing Dongyue Temple, a major Taoist temple.

After skirting a bunch of firecrackers on the street outside, we were greeted with stall after stall of food and knick-knacks for sale, mostly with an ox theme for the Year of the Ox.

When I started taking photos of the performers seen in the picture above, one quickly grabbed me and insisted on having my photo taken with her.

For foreigners in Beijing, the spring festival week is a delightful respite from traffic and the normal bustle of the city. Newspapers don’t publish for a day or two, and the news is quiet.

But there is unsettling news in Hong Kong, where residents set aside their quest for money briefly to consult the feng shui masters. Not good news.

A politician picked a "fortune stick" in an annual Taoist ceremony predicting how prosperous the year ahead will be, and he pulled out the worst possible number -- 27.

According to this Deutsche Presse-Agentur report, feng shui masters in Hong Kong said the fortune stick meant the former colony faced a turbulent and unsettled year with possible conflicts between the government and people.

That number was also drawn in 1992, shortly before the arrival of last British governor Chris Patten set off a series of political clashes in the territory.

Item: For those interested in learning more about the unlucky omen in Hong Kong, read this fascinating blog post. In short, the unlucky stick said: "Evil and calamity are coming and going all around you. And it comes from you."