The Lantern Festival

I had forgotten about posting these, but remembered since I'm leaving that I had some extra China pics lying around waiting to be uploaded. I took these during the Lantern Festival, which is the culmination of the 2 week Lunar New Year celebration (also known in these parts as the Spring Festival).

Chinese New Year in itself is not that cool...mostly it's just constantly hearing firecrackers for 2 weeks, getting woken up by them etc. The funny thing is that you see unsupervised children setting off firecrackers and fireworks constantly.

But the Lantern Festival is awesome. They line the streets with lanterns and shut down traffic and EVERYONE comes out to look at the lanterns, watch fireworks, touch the lions and dragons for good luck

and jump over bonfires to get rid of the bad things from the previous year (I have pics of these too that haven't been uploaded.)

The city gets this cool quasi rave meets marti gras vibe, everyone out cruising around enjoying themselves...good times.