Went to the Chingay preview today to support the school band, because my brother is performing and thus he managed to acquire tickets for me and my mom.

All the Chingay stuff -- the goodie bags, the cheerleaders' shirts, the roadside decorations -- is in a utterly ridiculous shade of pink.

Band's performance (which ya'll saw for yourselves) was so-so; they lacked visual impact (not enough movement, the streamer-waving dance looks silly close up from the side of the road) and volume (no amplification makes them very soft compared to loud thomping dance music elsewhere). Also the band members tend, generally speaking, to be very dao during performances -- i.e. stony expressions -- which is, needless to say, inappropriate for a celebration. Quite sad.

There're some very cool items to watch out for:

Nine lion dance -- well this is interesting because I haven't seen it before; the performers use a contraption which suspend lion puppets from cords via some pulley mechanism, the performers stand behind the contraption and manipulate the puppets by pulling on the cords. They can actually make the lions dance; which, to me, is miraculous considering that not getting the cords entangled in the process seems like an impossible enough task already. It's hard to explain, better to see for yourself. =p

Japanese association -- They had this mass song and dance session -- "mass" here means really really massive, they flood the entire area with sheer number of performers. Then they have everyone dancing to the song -- probably specially written -- which is half in Japanese with an English chorus and sings about how Chingay is wonderful or somethinglikethat, and its very very cute.

Nan Hua Secondary -- the girls all kept their hair long for the performance and they did this head-banging style of dance, and coupled with the headsets they were wearing, it has dramatic visual impact.

Wushu -- The performers, from Hangzhou, China, are tiny -- around primary school age --- and they're probably more than a match for our own wushu people. (Hey Ozy and Jun Hong, if you're reading this, check them out. =p)