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An Estimated 80,000 Prayed at Yonghe Temple on the Chinese New Year

According to CCTV, an estimated 80,000 people went to Yonghe Temple, a Buddhist temple located in the northeastern part of Beijing, to burn incense and pray on Chinese New Year’s Day. According to People’s Daily, people have established a pattern of going to Yonghe to burn incense and say their prayers every Chinese New Year’s Day. Some of them even lined up overnight in front of the temple so they could be the first to burn the incense.

Due to the large number of incense-burners, the metro stop at the Yonghe Temple in Beijing was shut down. People had to walk an additional three kilometers to get to Yonghe Temple. By midnight on New Year’s eve, there were more than a thousand policemen on site. Each four of them stood hand in hand to form a “human wall divider” to cut the long lines of the crowd into small groups of about one hundred people each. There were about 10 meters distance between each of the “groups.”

Source: People’s Daily, February 11, 2013
http://politics.people.com.cn/n/2013/0211/c70731-20478188.html