Year of the rooster

After a really successful gaming night on Saturday (more about that later), we slept late this morning having only crawled to bed around half past two. After we had finished eating breakfast around one, we decided to go and see some Chinese New Year celebrations on Granville Island.

Weather wasn't the best, but it's an indoor market so it doesn't really matter. First we saw some calligraphy demonstrations they had going on - Dragon asked for the symbol for Dragon, but the lady didn't know how it was done so the old master had to show it for her. She was apparently a student as she also kept asking how different words would look like. Beautiful stuff.

We saw the lion dance procession going on - mostly it was a smaller two-person dragon who kept raiding the stalls for food. Looked really funny, people would give lettuce to the dragon who then proceeded in shredding it and throwing it all over the place. Very different from my Dragon who loves lettuce! The dragon show was put up by a local kung fu club - very traditional one as they also had taught their students the traditional lion dance - once in a while students would swap and the dragon would happily continue raiding.

We lazied around waiting for the martial arts demonstration to begin, got some more bison steaks - best meat we've eaten so far here: leaner than beef, and so delicious. Bought some tasty honey, and lots of fruit and berries, strawberries, rasberries, blueberries... selection there is fantastic. In the end we only caught the first part of the demonstration - first the young kids who tried their best but hadn't yet quite mastered the synchronisation, then bit older kids, then couple of adults. We saw some traditional Chinese dancing, and some Chinese opera - I quite liked the lady but the gentleman's voice was a bit too violent for my ears. In addition, the man next to me holding a toddler was leaning on me to get a better view and my legs were giving out.

What I love about Vancouver (part n+1) is that all these people from different backgrounds are proud of their own cultures, and are more than happy to talk about it and show it off. I realised only then that this was never the way in England where it was assumed that immigrants would more or less want to blend into the society and not make a big number out of being different. Nowhere else have I ever been labeled as "westerner" - in one shop where they asked about the dragon calligraphy and we told that it was for Dragon, the lady asked "As in King Arthur legends?" like that was the only dragon reference she could think of for people who looked like us. First it just seemed strange - legend of King Arthur isn't exactly in my heritage - until I realised that probably for the first time in my life I had been heavily stereotyped, and quite inaccurately as well. Walking in someone else's shoes and so on, eh?