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I went down to see the festivities for the Chinese New Year. I missed the parade, which went down Charing Cross Road from Chinatown to Trafalgar square, but there was still a lot going on
Trafalgar Square was packed with people, so I couldn't see the dragon dance that well
Lion statue on Nelson's Column
Afterwards the dragon guys were hanging out behind the column.
more dragon dudes...
Dragon group picture.
Onstage after the dragons were some dancers (men with umbrellas and women with fans an handkerchiefs) accompanied by drummers and a dude playing this awesome squeaky sargam-type trumpet, accompanied by
a guy on one of those mouth organs with reeds poking out of it and yapping through one of those plastic tongue-whistle things. I didn't get any pictures of this because there were too many people in the "press section" crawling up on the barriers with they DV cams. After that was the Golden Sail dance troupe, who I guess were formed in the 1730s during the Qin (maybe) dynasty? At this point it was about two so I walked up to Leicester sqaure to see the fireworks.
This is about what all of my pictures of the fireworks look like (i.e. smoke and children on the shoulders of their parents), because there was a similarly huge crowd packed into tiny Leicester square. However, what's neat about the Chinese approach to fireworks is that it's entirely based on being as loud as possible (i.e. a shit ton of firecrackers!) and has nothing really pretty to look at, and thankfully no synchronized music or anything.
Here is Leicester Square Garden with some of the wasted F.C. casings.
Up in Lisle Street at the top of Leicester Square a Lion dance was going from place to place bringing good luck. Out in front of See Woo grocery, a guy fed the Lion some cabbage which got shredded and thrown all over the place.
Kung Hei Fat Choi!