In praise of being ordinary

Last night in Sydney the local  Chinese community gave Sydney a priceless cultural present to celebrate Chinese New Year.
This was a Twilight Parade, with elaborate floats, magnificent costumes, dancing, drums and dragons. Lots of dragons. It was reported as the largest Chinese celebration for New Year, outside of China. Who knows if that is true or not. It certainly felt true, as the parade worked its way through the centre of the city.
This has become a major event on the summer calender, for those who know that it is on. But The Chinese New Year doesn’t get a quarter of media promotion that is given to other festivals on in Sydney during summer.
More than 3 000 Chinese-Australians gave of their time energy and talent to make this parade happen. Ordinary people; mums, dads, kids, tradesmen, bankers, shopkeepers, chefs and clerks.
There were a few poobahs up the front of the parade, councilors, politicans and glamorous movie stars, soaking up glory. But the rest of the paraders were our neighbours and schoolmates.
About 100 000 people came into town to enjoy the spectacle as spectators. But that means about 4 million people didn’t get to see this magnificent cultural celebration.
And how did the media bring this massive event into our homes. About 7 seconds viewing on the TV news, photographed in the dark. A small paragraph in the paper; with no photos. A story about a picnic in the park earlier in the day got more media coverage.
All those people who spent months rehearsing, training, practicing, making costumes, raising funds really add quality and depth to life in Sydney.
As I walked around Hyde park earlier in the afternoon I was constantly greeted with smiles, laughter, people pleased for a chance to show off their costumes and show me how they brought dragons to life during the Twilight Parade.

For more images of the costumes in the parade, have a look at my Flickr gallery