Gung Hei Fat Choi!
…as they made us all shout from the central stage during yesterday’s Chinese New Year festivities in Trafalgar Square. Hopefully, this will be a prosperous year indeed, as this is the golden year of the pig.
London’s Trafalgar Square and Soho were inundated yesterday as the Chinese Association and Mayor Ken Livingstone laid on the biggest Chinese New Year celebration London has yet seen. 
The city was lavishly decorated with red lanterns and cultural performances on stage alternated with raucious lion-and dragon dancers parading through the streets. The crowds in Soho—normally quiet away from the tourist magnets around the square—were so dense that police had to be grafted in to keep people moving. I hope that more will return to sample Chinatown’s many delights in the future, but on this day, getting into a shop or restaurant, or even to the stalls lining the street, was near impossible.
The weather put a bit of a dampener on the event: it was so dark that taking photos was near impossible, but at least we were spared a drenching. Still, I long to move away from dim Britain, and celebrating Chinese New Year brought back the travel bug. That evening, one of our mate’s colleagues regaled us with stories of 3 months spent backpacking through China. I can feel my feet beginning to itch, yet again.
But until that time, I’ll have to make do with occasional dinner at the Wong Kei.
Tags: Chinese New Year, London, Travel, Travels on my Doorstep, UK, Tag Index
Denni