Photographs from Chinese New Year 2011.
I didn't get a chance to post about it at the time, but Lyssa, Keely, and I went to Washington, DC's Chinese New Year Celebration downtown. Once again, I went in cold because I was curious about the experience, mostly because barely-remembered memories of television shows about Chinese New Years from my childhood aren't really anything to go on. I knew in some hazy fashion that fireworks were involved, but I hadn't realized that they'd be unrolling gigantic strings of firecrackers - Black Cats, we used to call them. Specifically, they were strings that, when coiled up, were about three feet in diameter. In high school, a few of us drove across the border into Ohio to hit up the only legal fireworks outlet that we knew of (which was neigh mythical - they had everything that was illegal in Pennsylvania (which is a pretty long list - it's called Puritan Pennsylvania for a reason)) and they had those very rolls for sale, prominently labeled "So long that they'll still be going off by the time the police get you to jail." Needless to say, the din and cordite smoke were impressive.
Anyway, here are the pictures.
The most striking thing about the celebration, in hindsight, was that the mayor of DC was booed loudly when he took the stage after the parade was over.