The Lantern Festival

Our wonderful neighbor community, Yulan, put on a Lantern Festival for all the locals and foreigners.

- The actual Lantern Festival is supposed to be held on the first full moon after the New Year (I think that's how it goes anyway, don't quote me on that!), which is this Monday night.

- Typcially you light the lanterns and let them fly, sort of like in the movie Tangled. Before you let them lose, you're supposed to write riddles on them, so whoever catches the lantern when it falls has to solve the riddle.

- There is also a dragon dance and a lion dance. Plus we got to be in a parade :) I have some ify looking pictures, and some video. I'm hoping to get pics from someone who had a better night time camera, so I may change these. But here are a few:

We felt bad but I guess not that bad. Our little parade stopped in the middle of intersections to perform. The drummers kept the beat, while the dragon danced, and the cars honked their way through :)

Blurry I know. These are the 2 lion dancers. And the dude on the left leads them and calls them to dance. I guess they are meant to be loud in order to scare away the evil spirits from last year.

For Bellingham people, our parade was the equivalent of crossing the Guide around 6:30 pm. For Seattle people, I'm not sure the equivalent, maybe Aurora? Either way, at least we have the green light!

¿We're assuming this is the Happy New Year shrine that indicates what year it is. This year is of course, the dragon! Don't you love how we're just walking through traffic? Nothing as organized as Ski to Sea or anything.

Proudly holding our lanterns. Dana *Me* Julie, Pat and Line. We have our rabbit lantenrs. We assume they're supposed to be burned, as last year was the year of the rabbit. Julie is wearing what we ssume are dragon horns. They were very popular among the youngsters.

The lion dancers. So cute! .... And, you know, a couple of cars. This is very typical China I'm thinking.











A look at the dragon dancers. Some of our teachers and PTA members actually did this for our New Year's celebration at school. I'm thinking that's a lot of arm strength to keep this going!