gung hay fat choy

I forgot to bring my camera when I went to the Chinese New Year parade. But that's probably okay. It was raining, and some of the dragons had plastic over their heads to protect them. It was really cute to see the little kids in the mini-dragons, some of them just holding onto the tail, with their little dragon pants on, looking slightly bewildered.

My friend and I got pelted with candy, waved at by various city officials, and Mayor Gavin Newsom came by and shook our hands. He was wearing a black velvet jacket-type thing that was kind of gathered in the front and had velvet buttons. It looked sort of retro. and he had a scarf loosely wrapped around his neck. Seriously, no Boston politician would ever dare to even consider the mild thought of even potentially thinking of wondering if they could ever possibly actually wear something like that, especially in public, never mind a parade because they just couldn't get away with it. But oh yeah, we're not in Boston anymore, Toto.

And they were filming part of the parade up in Union Square, so the whole thing was stopped for about 20 minutes. We got to examine in detail some marchers waving huge flags that flopped in the wet pavement and occasionally got wrapped around their ankles. Further down, there was a group of about 80 kids in yellow, twirling big knives. Right in front of us, though, there was a huge, green and red dragon that looped and danced around itself. It was fascinating to watch. But the most fascinating part was watching the dancers. There was a guy with a shaved head, dressed in all black, directing everyone. He would tell the leader of the dragon where to go, and then someone would crouch in the middle of the street so that all the dancers behind would know where to turn. On the sidelines, there was another whole group of dancers, and periodically, the guy in black would tell one of them to jump in, and they would go and relieve one of the dancers. It looked like a very demanding and energetic job, dragon dancing. And clearly it is something that one person cannot do alone. It also looked like and exercise, for the dancers, in anonymity, in the sense of giving up your ego for the sake of the larger whole. I could be reading more into it than is really there, but that's what I see. Because it seems to me that in western culture, we grow up with this bizarre idea that somehow we are special and more important and that we need to be recognized for what we do that is more special and more important than what other people do. Maybe not everyone thinks this, but the idea is out there. But in fact, what we do is really only important so long as it contributes to something larger. I think it can be really fun to let your ego go for a while. Egos are really so cumbersome anyway.