CNY Celebration

One of my Mom's good friends is Chinese. For the last 3 years (the last 2 with Abba) I have gone to a local Chinese community center that she belongs to and celebrated CNY. It's very cool. Mom was sick this year so Abby and I went with DA. Before we left I did another mini photo shoot of Abby in her traditional Chinese dress. Doesn't she look pretty :)


This picture is so Abby :)

I think she looks stunning in red.

So last year when we went Abby was pretty little and had only been home about a month or so. This year was different. I think she had a good time. She didn't eat much of the 11 courses that we were served though. I didn't either. I was too busy making sure she didn't trash her pretty dress. She saw everyone using chop sticks and decided she needed some too :) Here she is with Da trying to figure them out.

Not to sure what to make of the CNY dragon puppet.

She was surprisingly brave with the dragons. here she is pictured with my Mom's friend Nu.

Giving the dragon a red envelope. It helped that this was the baby dragon so not quite as intimidating :)

With Nu waiting to put her red envelope in the dragon's mouth.

This was the big dragon too but she did it!

Isn't it beautiful? Nu's son told me that if you want to be a part of the dragon dance then you have to practice once a week for a year. Th big dragon and the little one circled all through the room and crowd several times.

Then the big one gets down on the floor and tries to rest and or sleep. The kids then come up and poke and tease the dragon until it wakes up and starts dancing again. The dance ends when the dragon stretches up tall and grabs an ornament off of the ceiling.

The baby dragon :)

Sleeping dragon (out of order). The people dressed in black banged on drums and pounded cymbals (sp?) while the dragons danced.

Eating the final course. oranges for good luck :)

Checking out the line head after the dance.

Outside of the community center.

CNY Tree

Here's 2 videos too. The first is of the dragon dance. The second is of a man attending the celebration that they asked to come up and demonstrate the drums. he evidently used to play them.