Happy Chinese New Year

This year's Chinese New Years falls on Sunday, Feb 18. To celebrate the new year of the pig, Bo and I went to London where they're hosting the China in London 2007 event. Trafragal Square had 7 hrs of performances from Chinese opera to lion dancing. We were lucky to have caught the lion dance. They invited two brothers from the Canton province to perform the lion dance on the traditional bench setup, and they were excellent. They also hold the Guinness book of records for the longest lion dance jump.

The London Chinatown was about the size of the one in Calgary. However, it was really difficult to go anywhere. The number of people there were incredible. The police initially didn't control the direction of the crowd, so people were walking in every direction and this caused a huge deadlock. People were unable to get anywhere, there were lots of pushing and shoving. It took us about 30 minutes to get from one end of the block to the other (which normally takes 2 minutes) Every restaurant had a lineup. They blocked off several roads that run in and around Chinatown and turned it into pedestrian walkways, but the roads were still congested with people.

Leicester square was set up for the fire cracker display again this year. There were two shows but unlike last year, we only caught the second one. From last year's experience, we thought the show would last 20 mins. However, this year, it was around 5 mins long. It was still a nice display.

In the evening, we caught a show in the Royal Opera House in Covert Garden. The first group performed music with traditional Chinese instruments. The second was a Chinese rock and roll band called 'Big Yellow'. Though the drummer is Caucasian. The last group was called 'Frank Chickens'. They're mostly Japanese performers except for one big Ireland dude. This group was weird and funny. They were singing and dancing and keep changing into weird costumes.