Editing Blog/2024-02-24/Chinese New Year Parade

The LNY Parade was today in San Francisco and it was an absolute riot. I haven't seen that many children in the city ever and it's really nice to see. Near the end of the parade there were these huge fireworks being set off and it was starting to be a little like a lightweight Diwali. Julie remarked that it was unusual they were setting these off above everyone but we didn't think much of it. But later, [https://youtube.com/shorts/De1AaZllvJw we found out why]. It's because it was just some guy setting them off, haha!

<youtube>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De1AaZllvJw</youtube>

Anyway, they were a hell of a sight and honestly quite fun to witness. The parade itself was pretty cool, with lots of people from all sorts of places, a few marching bands, a group from the shao lin temple, and so on, interspersed with random casinos that must have sponsored some of the whole thing.

[[File:Bijili-100-wala.png|thumb|alt=A screen capture of a video showing a hundred bijili crackers strung together being lit|A screen capture of a video showing a hundred bijili crackers strung together being lit]]

SFPD were funny since they had a guy behind throwing the equivalent of what we'd call a hundred-wala behind their truck every now and then. I thought that was interesting till we went up to Chinatown and found that people were lighting and tossing these guys (something people would do in India) into the street.

[[File:IMG 5946.MOV|thumb|centre|alt=A video of someone tossing firecrackers into the street|A video of someone tossing firecrackers into the street]]

Overall, a fun evening. The streets were packed and there were lots of children around, which definitely makes the whole city seem far more lively than it usually does!