Kung Hey Fat Choi!

Since first my train and then the Underground were delayed, I was worried I'd be late, but as it happens when I reached Charing Cross both Ana and Mireia were still below ground, in transit. As the Parade had already started, I decided to make my own interpretation of our meeting point arrangement. In a typical foreigners' approach, none of us knew any landmarks in the area, so Mireia had decided the meeting point would be "the most colourful thing you see when you come out of the Underground" (is it very obvious we all had mobile phones?). Well, I decided the most colourful thing in the vicinity were the colourful fish going past on the parade, which I could just glimpse above the assembled heads!

For once, being short was actually handy - everyone felt sorry when they saw me craning my neck and stretching my camera above my head to photograph what I couldn't see, so before I knew it I was right at the front, next to a 4-year-old! Having managed to get to this great spot, I enjoyed it, delighting in the little chinese girls dancing with a cross between a fan and a scarf, older girls with long coloured ribbons, a group in red doing amazingly coordinated jumps and twists, a giant panda promoting a new film (Kung Fu Panda is supposed to be premièring some time this year - I have the paper headband to prove it!), and many others.

Of course, my position was not so fantastic when Mireia arrived and was trying to find me - somehow my "I'm in front of Charing Cross Train Station, in the front row watching the Parade" wasn't considered very helpful, perhaps because I didn't send a periscope with it! So I squeezed back out through the crowd. It must be said it's considerably easier in that direction - can't think why, but people seem much more willing to let you go past them if you're moving away from the front!

Having disentangled myself from the crowd and found Mireia, it became clear that it would be virtually impossible for the two of us to reach the front again together, so we opted instead to make our way to Trafalgar Square, in the hope of securing a good vantage point there, to watch the 'real show': the official Chinese New Year in London.

As we were making our way to Trafalgar Sq., Ana made contact, so we met her there and after peeping at the parade as its end went round the corner, we made our way down to find a spot in front of the stage... or kind of!

Being the official celebrations, they started off with all the official speeches: the Mayor of London, the head of the London Chinatown Association, the Chinese ambassador, the head of the Metropolitan Police... the only relief from boredom were the mildly befuddled presenters and the accents - both of the Chinese officials attempting to speak English and of the English ones struggling to even wish people a happy new year (Kung Hey Fat Choi)! The only speech we really enjoyed was a non-planned one: one of the presenters organized things to secretly surprise a police officer who's been working in Chinatown for 30 years, and enjoys it so much that he is staying on, even though he was due to retire this year. She managed to organize things so that he would be posted near the stage, and called him up to pay him homage, much to his surprise. So he had to give an impromptu speech, which - perhaps not surprisingly - was much more lively and interesting than all the official ones, and he actually said 2 or 3 sentences in fluent Cantonese!

Before they were allowed to leave, the VIPs (and the police officer) took part in an important ceremony: the awakening of the dragons. Two dragons were brought onto the stage, wearing blindfolds, and the VIPs were to 'wake them up' by painting their eyes on, thus allowing them to see the world and begin their dance.

We thought the first dragon's dance was very good, until we saw the second one! Besides finding the dragon itself much prettier, in gold and red rather than fluorescent yellow and pink, the dance itself was superb! The speed with which those people moved around, over and under each other without hitting each other with their poles or tying knots in the dragon's body, I honestly do not know!

The dragon dance was followed by performances from the "Chinese All Women's Youth Association" (I hope I got the name right!), starting with a dance in which each girl was dressed to represent one of the different Chinese peoples - although exactly which 'culture' was represented by the Mickey Mouse ears in a green leaf-like head-dress, we couldn't quite decide... They were followed by a fantastic group of kids playing traditional musical instruments and several dance groups, including a group of girls with a single long feather in their head-dress, which danced beautifully with every elegant move they made.


By this stage, we were starving, so as good 'latin girls' we abandoned the performances in search of food. Of course, on a day such as this, we had to eat Chinese food, in Chinatown! There was a warm red glow to the streets, with the sun's rays reflected off all the hanging red and yellow lanterns and streamers. We followed the trail of people walking back out with nice-smelling foodstuffs, and, guided by our stomachs as much as our noses, found a little shop with a production-line food sale process. Once we'd eaten, Mireia and I were in desperate need of respite from the crowds, and Ana, though unaffected by our agoraphobia - "this is like a normal day in the centre of Mexico city" - was in need of a cup of tea, so we headed to a quiet little esplanade. En route, we made stops for Mireia to buy some traditional Chinese sweets for dessert (a bean sweet in batter covered with sesame-seeds and a 'Tiger roll') and for Ana and Mireia to buy a little rat each, as a good luck charm for the Year of the Rat, which is their year, as both have the Rat as their Chinese zodiac sign.

While we were enjoying our tea and experimenting with the Chinese sweets, Kamini called to announce she'd given up on writing her assignments and decided to join us for the festivities instead. After a nice tea and a chat, Mireia decided to head back to Oxford to tackle her assignments, and myself, Ana and Kamini headed back towards Chinatown, for another look around as the dark set in, and bought a half-price dragon each (the advantage of shopping at the end, when people want to get rid of stock!), while we waited for 6 o'clock to see the fireworks at Leister Square. Ana, Mireia and I had heard them throughout the day (they went off every hour from 1pm), but we were convinced they were just firecrackers and therefore not very exciting to watch. Kamini soon put us right, and we caught the last, and arguably the best - as it was in darkness - firework display of the day.


It was quite impressive, although not the most spectacular I've ever seen, and even though it ended with soot falling in my eye... We wandered back through Chinatown and finally declared an end to the day's festivities and went home, where Suzanne found a nice habitat for my dragon.

NOTE: Mireia was kind enough to point out I somehow misunderstood them - both her and Ana are Chickens, not Rats. My apologies, girls! ;)