Last Honolulu after climbing to the summit of Diamond Head in a poor shoe choice, (see previous post) we met up with Rance and headed to Chinatown for the annual Chinese New Year Parade. Now, I’m not a huge fan of parades, normally they’re early in the morning and it’s cold outside and the band music is so loud. Geeze, I sound like I’m a 60 year old woman. But you can’t pass up a parade that doesn’t start until 3:30pm (now that’s Hawaii time) and with a limited number of bands and tons  of Chinese Dancing Lions and Dragons.

Is this the Groucho Marx of Chinese Dragons?

In this parade I would say in descending order of number of entrants it was Chinese Dancing Lions, Princesses riding in Corvettes, Chinese Dragons, Politicians, Martial Art Schools, Bands, Radio Stations, with Senior Center exercise groups being represented only once. I could have gone for more of that. The group would occasional stop their slow stroll on the parade route and show off their exercise routine that mainly consisted of low kicks with hands on hips.

The rare walking princess. What I didn't capture are 4"inch high heeled shoes she wore for the two hour parade. Amazing.

Not in attendance were floats or horses which means there also was no horse poop which was a welcome relief, especially because the smells of Chinatown are sometimes all you need

I liked the Dancing Lions the most in part because there were so many people playing the support role. You can only be the butt of a lion for so long before your legs and back give out and someone else has to come in and switch out. I kept wondering if you worked your way up to be the head of a Lion after playing the part of the butt for a certain length of time, if so I’m hoping I can stop playing the butt part in my life and get to be the head of the lion soon.

It's tough to be a butt.

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