Get Your Dragon On: Lunar New Year Parades

The ninth annual Chinatown Lunar New Year Parade and Festival kicks off
at 1 p.m. on Mott Street and winds it way through Chinatown to Worth
Street.



Organizers expect more than 5,000 people to take part in the
parade, which features floats, lion and dragon dances, and marching
bands. The parade ends at 3 p.m. and is followed by a cultural festival
on Bayard Street.

Hundreds of people in Wellington have attended a parade
with dragons, dancing and firecrackers to mark the beginning of the
Chinese New Year.

But the meditation group, Falun Gong, has once again been banned from the event's parade.

The spiritual movement is banned in China and Chinese foreign embassies use aggressive diplomacy against it in other countries.

Radio New Zealand reported yesterday it would not be allowed to take
part in the festivities for the Year of the Rat, which began on
Thursday in New Zealand and other countries and will last for two weeks.

The festivities started with a two-hour parade of
hundreds of performers including dragons, lions and dancers travelling
through the West End.

The opening ceremony at Trafalgar Square featured
Chinese dragons, martial arts, and traditional and contemporary music
and dance.

London's celebrations are the biggest outside Asia, community leaders say.

A giant bamboo rat chasing a wedge of cheese led a parade of
traditional dragon dancers and stilt walkers in flowing red gowns
through the streets of central Sydney today to welcome in the
Chinese new year.

More than 80,000 people turned up to the Chinese 2008 Year of
the Rat festival parade which also featured huge chinese lanterns,
recitations of Chinese poetry and music and Tai Chi
demonstrations.

Crowds up to eight deep lined the parade route from Town Hall,
through Chinatown, to Darling Harbour's Tumbalong Park, for what
organisers say is the biggest celebration of Chinese New Year
outside of Asia.