Anyone currently visiting the park surrounding the Kalemegdan Fortress in Belgrade will encounter China twice:

– once in the form of large, colorful figures and

– a second time in the form of an impressive photo exhibition.

China makes children happy, and adults too

If, like most people, you enter the extensive grounds from the Knez Mihajlova promenade, you will notice unusually colourful splashes of paint even from a distance. As you get closer, you notice that these are typical Chinese figures, which are supposed to make children and adults equally happy and were set up here on the occasion of the Chinese New Year.

There are frogs, fish, flamingos

• 

• 

• 

• 

and – of course – an impressive dragon:

And also brightly coloured life-size replicas of the famous Chinese ceramic warriors are not missing.

• 

• 

• 

and a large, likewise colourful lettering (probably) offers the best greetings for the New Year.

Impressive photos from China merge with Belgrade

For small children these figrues are certainly an experience. The open-air exhibition with breathtaking photographs from China, which can be found further back along the promenade that runs above the Sava, is aimed more at adults. This is where the impressive view of New Belgrade and the surrounding area, including the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, is revealed,

or the questionable new construction project „Belgrade Waterfront“,

currently topped by breathtaking large-format photographs of Chinese landscapes and buildings.

Collages of image and real views

In devon photography and reality in the background, new insights, harmonies and contrasts emerge.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Serbian-Chinese common ground: A new year of their own

By the way, China and Serbia do indeed have things in common regarding the New Year. They both celebrate it differently from the usual international calendar. Serbia, however, has a stable date, while the Chinese must consult a combination from a bound moon calendar (lunisolar calendar = moon calendar with leap months) and a solar calendar to be able to plan for the next New Year.

How many years of Chinese time has actually begun?

We have tried to find out which new years of the Chinese calendar have recently begun.

However, this is not so easy because the various sources on the Internet that we have found do not usually give an exact answer:

There are then hints like the one that the Chinese calendar system is the most complicated one of all. And you will be informed that it is based on a cycle of 60 years, and that you are now in the 78th cycle. Furthermore, the year 2636 before Christ is given as the beginning of the Chinese calendar.

Which, if we have not miscalculated (2636 + 2020 = ? ), means that we should now be in the year 4656 of the Chinese calendar.

Why you might be a rat! And what you should therefore know!

What seems to be certain is that the new Chinese calendar year is a year of the rat. Rats, it is said, are familiar, sociably intelligent, originally purposeful, energetic, but also talkative and sometimes aggressive.

Anyone looking for the ideal star sign partners in the sense of the Chinese horoscope will suddenly become aware of a circumstance that also applies to our usual star signs: Here, it must be above all about platonic love, since the supposedly idle pairings that come out of it are actually grotesque.

Ideal partners in love are, according to the Chinese signs for the rat, the dragon and the monkey, the buffalo or the snake. Rat and dog still get along well, moderately it goes together with tiger, rabbit, sheep, rooster and pig and it becomes quite critical when rat and horse enter into a union.

Although this has nothing to do with the current Chinese add-ons in the park around Kalemegdan, it has personally encouraged us to go on extensive research trips on the Internet in search of more information about these other foreign zodiac signs and their characteristics.

Maybe you feel the same way, you rat, monkey, sheep or pig?

Analysis of the economic interdependencies

Incidentally, China has already arrived economically in Serbia, but also in other countries in the region. The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung has published what is probably the most recent report on this subject.

First direct train China-Serbia arrived

The „arrival of China“ in Serbia became particularly tangible on 24 October 2019, when the first direct train from China arrived in Belgrade after exactly one month of travel. „Lok-Report“ writes about it:

The train started on September 24th from the Chinese city of Jinan in Shangdong Province and covered some 10.500 km China, Mongolia, Russia, Belarus, Poland, Hungary and Serbia.