Watching Singapore Chingay 2012 Parade
Sun, February 5, 2012 at 10:50AM
;)
If there would not have been anybody giving away free tickets to us, we would never know the existence of this singaporean style carnival-like parade which is apparently conducted annually. As what is said in their website about origin of Chingay:
A dazzling extravaganza of colours and cultural diversity, Chingay Parade Singapore is known for its resplendent floats and multi-cultural local and international performances that are an insight to our festive traditions and delight the hearts of many Singaporeans and tourists.
The word Chingay is from the Hokkien dialect, of which the Mandarin equivalent is Zhuang Yi, meaning "the art of masquerade". The festival began as a neighbourhood parade with only Chinese elements in 1973. Today, the Chingay Parade has evolved to be the grandest street and floats parade in Asia, showcasing the rich, vibrant multi-culturalism of Singapore and exciting cultures all over the world. To all Singaporeans, the next Chingay Parade is a parade of our people, our dreams and our pride!
This year's theme is "Love, Care, Kindness Everywhere" as showed by many heart shaped red big balloons that decorated the venue. Before the parade started, the ever energetic MC kept shouting, "Chingay Chingay. People People. Singapore Singapore" which after every phrase audience had to answer with "we are one!". The MC went non-stop with the Chingay cheer. I am pretty sure he had a good sleep last night after the event.
It was opened by a pair of 88-meter long dragon kite-like decorations also called as "dragons-in-the-sky" coming from both sides of the long seats of audience and met in the centre to welcome us. It then followed by series of performances by representatives of countries -China, Taiwan, Japan, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia and of course, Singapore- and performances from community clubs in Singapore.
My favorite performance? The one by Taichi Gong Fu Fan that consisted of 1000 taichi athletes varied from young ones to senior ones! The choreography moved in harmony with the upbeat music, in contrary what I would think of taichi that connotes with serene and natural earth music. And I especially liked it when each of them opened their fans in one count -wooosh!- and all of a sudden the water covered street was dominated by red color.
As I noticed, the whole decoration involved many dragons. I am not entirely sure if it had something to do with the Dragon Year, or it is actually a default theme of the annual parade. But the overall feel was definitely very chinese new year.
In a typical Singapore fashion of doing things, from the beginning to end the event was organized very well. Everything was so much in order and extremely tidy. My only complaint was that there was not any single sight of food stall at all in any corner of the venue! The whole event basically took 3 hours from 7:30 to 10:30pm and I have to admit, in the last 1 hour I had to fight myself not to constantly think about food and wished that the parade was over quickly.
All in all, I do not regret coming to see the parade; and happy that we used the free tickets. It was a perfect way to end our 1-year stay in Singapore. :)
Reader Comments (8)
Makasih sudah mampir ya...maaf kalau nggak sempat blogwalking secara blogwalking ke blog sendiripun jarang, hehe....
Iya, kamu juga masih rajin ngeblog....Masih di Angola atau sudah pindah sekarang? Take care there :)
udah pindah2, sekarang lagi di yokohama... take care juga ya! :)
Vico @ http://griyamobilkita.webs.com