Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Chinese New Year Parade, 2009

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Nope, there is no food in this post--but there are cute kids and lions and more confetti than you can shake a stick at! I finally managed to get myself to the Chinese New Year Parade in Chinatown this year and had a blast. I DID get there almost 2 hours early, thanks to some faulty information on the website (it said it started at noon!) but the upside to that is that I had a prime spot to watch from.

Confetti shower

I didn't wait by myself for very long, either--pretty soon, there was a decent crowd, most of whom were entertaining themselves (and each other) by shooting off confetti cannons.

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This kiddo made his own lion dance. It was a really beautiful day (45 degrees, that's almost t-shirt and shorts weather!) and there were plenty of people to watch. Still, I was getting kind of antsy when I finally heard drums approaching...

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First, the veterans. See how much confetti there is already?

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And then, the first of the lions! I was pretty excited at this point...but THEN the father of the adorable kid next to me handed me a hong bao so I could FEED the lions.

Feeding the lions

Here is said adorable kid, giving the lion a hong bao. They "eat" the packets (which contain small donations); this one then did a little dance for us. Lots of floats went by (one sponsored by Foxwoods, go figure, hah!) but my favorites were definitely the lions and dragons. I recently got a nice email from the company that makes those lions--check out their website. There is some gorgeous stuff there, if you should find yourself in need of a lion or two :).

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Then the Shaolin kungfu students came through and did a short performance. Man, they were impressive.

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And my favorite person in the parade. He's totally giving me the eye, right?

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The dragon--a proper, multi-person dragon! None of this single person tomfoolery!

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One more touch of the lion, for luck....

Happy Niu Year

And here comes the niu year, riding in on a bicycle. HAH!! (The full photo set is here.)

Happy Year of the Ox to all!

2 comments:

Tenebrous Kate said...

Those are stunning photos! Looks like a lot of fun :) Everyone at the parade was really blessed with such gorgeous weather on Sunday. That's GOT to be a sign of good things in the New Year!

tofugirl said...

Thanks Kate! Yeah, I'm going with "good omen" too...although I have to laugh because I got there so early and picked out a spot on the sunny side of the street to stand on....it just didn't occur to me that the sun would MOVE.

Can't wait for the weekend! MUAHAHAHAAAAA