Sun!!!

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My Spring Festival holiday weather this year was one dreary, cold, wet, windy day after the next until the last day. It started out foggy then the sun burned off the clinging, wet crap to give us a grand, hot day, just in time for Lantern Festival, which is on the first full moon of the lunar year. We went to a nearby village with some friends for a feast and festivities. The villages have the best parades, in fact the only parades, since the city seems incapable of doing much more than bustling, gridlocking, and littering.

The parade was a noisy, boisterous affair with floats, firecrackers, dragons, gods in fancy carts, and kids made up to be traditional characters, gods, and goddesses. The kids are made up early in the day and sit on their uncomfortable perches for a couple of hours in the hot sun prior to the parade. These are generally village kids chosen, no doubt, for their ability to sit still without whining or fidgeting, something most of the modern city kids seem to be incapable of, in spite of the the greatest efforts of Tiger Mothers.