I bugged my friend Hyg to come with me and watch this year’s Lunar New Year parade in Manhattan’s Chinatown, and here’s how it went. I stood in the dirty, slushie snow for hours, and saw the following:

My friend Hyg (waving the little Chinese flag), whom I couldn’t actually hang out with until after the parade because we were on opposite sides of a completely blocked street (we also had to wait about an hour and a half for the parade to start, as evidenced by that old lady to her right reading a book to pass time):

 

 

Random people watching the parade from their windows:

 

 

Bundled up little cuties:

 

 

Adorable little lambs (it is the year of the sheep/ram after all):
SO much confetti:

 

 

This grandma beside Hyg who collected several of the flags being distributed, kept looking judgementally at this group of teenagers having trouble with their confetti cannons:

 

 

This man, whose job seemed to be to get everyone excited:

 

 

 

 This joyous young lady:

 

 

Various groups from the police and fire departments:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other interesting characters:

 

 

Lots of marching bands:

 

 

Pretty/interesting people riding cars:

 

 

ALL THE DRAGONS:

 

 

 

 

Papier-mâché rams:

 

And quite a few dance troupes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

After standing around in the cold for hours, Hyg and I were ready to go get shu mai and baked pork buns at Mei Li Wah, which was half a block from the main parade route. We tossed some hot tea and wonton soup in there as well for good measure. Our waitress gave us a completely judgemental look for not ordering noodles with our soups (guess we won’t be living long lives, and also, there was a lot of judgement on this day).

 

Err, I was so hungry that I’d almost finished the pork bun before remembering to take photos.

 

We decided to be two little piggies and have some dessert after. Some of the roads were still blocked so we went and tried Beautiful Memory Desserts, just across the street.  They had really strange/interesting sounding desserts like “mango thai black glutinous rice in vanilla sauce”, “durian pancakes”, and almond and sesame soups. Hyg and I went with the Combo #3 consisting of “grass jelly with green tea & vanilla ice cream, mango pancakes, and snow white”.

The “snow white” and grass jelly and ice cream desserts both had a base of shaved ice and vanilla sauce. The “snow white” had bananas, lychee, mangoes, toddy palm seeds (which I think are what we call “kaong” in Filipino), and some seeds from what I think is dragon fruit. The grass jelly and ice cream dessert also had some frozen balled watermelon on it, and I think that was probably my favorite of the three.

The mango “pancake” consisted of mango and stabilized whipped cream (almost marshmallowy in texture) wrapped in crepes. This was also excellent, but was sadly overshadowed by the other two desserts. If you’re into desserts that are fruity and not extremely sweet, I would recommend this place, despite the mediocre Yelp ratings.

And then the afternoon ended, but not without a reminder of how much confetti had fallen over us. I brought some with me to the office (carried around in the hood of my coat) the next day.

 

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