Pride in London

London has taken a battering in recent months, from terrorism and from fire.  But here are some photos of a happier day.   On Saturday 8th July the Pride in London parade set off from Portland Place to bring some colour to the West End.

Most participants wore T-shirts with slogans for their LGBTQ groups, but some looked more special.

Music for the parade came from Sheboom drummers, London Gay Symphonic Winds, and many soundsystems, but my favourite was “Flashdance…What a Feeling” played by a military band from the Guards Division.

I snapped some photos of Tom Daley on his way to join the Barclays float near the front of the parade. If you’ve won Olympic bronze and Commonwealth gold medals, and been World Champion, on the 10m diving board, then (a) you won’t be nervous on top of a parade float, and (b) you don’t need to wear anything special to stand out.

Chinese New Year in London

Decorations are up in London again, this time for Chinese New Year.   Although today is the first day of the lunar New Year, the main festivities are scheduled for the weekend.

The next sign is less inviting, with the same “Avoid the Area” message sent out for Christmas events.

If you are in Chinatown this week, what can you see?  Lots and lots of red lanterns.

If you want to combine two February festivals, go to the Chinese supermarket selling these bamboo branches with  heart decorations for Valentine’s Day.

Lanterns are also hanging at the Chinese Embassy (click here to see an earlier photo) and at the Fo Guang Shan Temple in Fitzrovia.

 

Welcome to the Year of the Monkey!

新年快乐

恭喜发财

 

28 Photos Later: Day 19 in China

Welcome to Day 19 of “28 Photos Later”.

It’s Chinese New Year.  So my “19” is hidden in the Shanghai car number plate above.  You can tell it’s from Shanghai because the 沪 character denotes the region.

And today’s photo is “Gong Xi Fa Cai”.  This balloon adorned my apartment in Shanghai for one Spring Festival.  The characters offer a traditional New Year greeting and wish for prosperity –  “Gong Xi Fa Cai!”

In my half-hearted attempts to continue studying just a little bit of Chinese, I sometimes read John Pasden’s Sinosplice blog.  This week John gave us a link to “Spring Festival Wishes from Around China”.  There are 15 audio clips of Chinese people wishing each other a Happy New Year.  The Beijing clip has an audible “r”; the Shanghai Chongming Island clip honestly sounds like someone I know in Shanghai; but the best one is the super-enthusiastic man from Luzhou, Sichuan. Click on the link and enjoy, even if you don’t know a word of Chinese.

“Spring Festival Wishes from Around China”

28 Photos Later: Day 18 in China

Welcome to Day 18 of “28 Photos Later”, which is another day of build-up to the Chinese New Year.

One thing I remember from living in China was that I should hang our red “fu” 福 signs upside down to bring good luck, by using a play on words between “good fortune is upside down” and “good fortune has arrived”.  Here is an example from a door in Tongli (the town that I described yesterday).

 

 

28 Photos Later: Day 17 in China

Welcome to Day 17 of “28 Photos Later”.

The blog is focusing on China this week, to mark the run-up to Chinese New Year.  So today’s photo is “Red Lantern”.

I spotted the lantern in Tong Li, one of the old “water towns” popular with tourists near Shanghai.  I spent a fun day there in 2011 with a tiny camera – this Sony CyberShot T900.

Wish I could go back now with my Nikon D90 and tripod!

Gifts from China

Last week my husband came home from China, laden with gifts from a reunion with colleagues from his previous expat posting.  One gift was a papercut decoration for the Year of the Horse, now proudly displayed on my front door and as a header for the blog to celebrate Chinese New Year.

The other gifts were so unexpected, and so generous – so I am using the blog to send our friends in Dalian, Shanghai and Guangzhou a big Thank You,  谢 谢, and 恭喜发财。Here are a few of the beautiful gifts, some from our favourite brands – Shanghai Tang and Liu Li Gong Fang.

We must now plan a sophisticated dinner party to use our new chopstick holders, and resist the temptation to stage mock battles between our horses, tigers, dragons and phoenix

The dragons of China may be timeless, but the skyline of Shanghai keeps changing.  Here is the view from my husband’s office last week. The highest building in the photo is the Shanghai Tower, which was topped out in 2013 at 632 metres, making it the second tallest building in the world.

View from the office in 2014

I remember the “olden days” of 2007 when the Jin Mao Tower seemed enormous, and the Shanghai World Financial Centre (“the bottle opener”) was still under construction. Click here to see a photo on my Flickr account: Progress in 2007

Even better, click here to see a photo of blue, smog-free, sky in Shanghai in 2009: JinMao and SWFC together – and blue sky!

Finally, Happy Chinese New Year to all Distant Drumlin’s readers – I will finish with a photo of the lantern decoration outside the Chinese Embassy here in London.

Dussehra – At Home

Our driver, Dayalan, celebrated the Hindu festival of Dussehra this week by performing a ritual for the vehicles and tools in our household, i.e. our car, my bicycle, the driver’s own motorcycle, and – for the first time – my camera.

Here are two photos of Dayalan performing the ritual. In the first he is holding a pumpkin. At the end of the ceremony he threw the pumpkin to the ground to break it in half, and then placed the two halves at the entrance to our driveway.

In the second photo he is holding a coconut, which smashed beautifully at the end, more easily than the pumpkin. Can you see the banana leaves on the front of the car?  This year we used leaves from our own garden, instead of buying them.

We have a beautiful garland of roses on the car now.

Performing the ritual on Friday afternoon at 4.30pm served two purposes – it was an auspicious time, and it was late in the week, so the prices of flowers had dropped by 40 per cent.

We placed lemons under the wheels of the vehicles.  The final part of the ritual was driving over the lemons to smash them.  Almost impossible with my bicycle; tricky with the Suzuki motorbike; but dead easy with the big Toyota Fortuner.  Now we are ready for anything on the roads of Bangalore.

Related posts from 2012 and 2013:
2012 Dussehra – part 1 – the car

2012 Dussehra – part 2 my bike

2012 Dussehra – part 3 the offerings

2013 Dussehra – the Prequel

2013 Dussehra – On the Streets

Dussehra – on the Streets

It’s festival time. Now you can see where some of the flowers and leaves from Sunday’s blogpost have gone.

On Monday, several different groups of people were gathering at one temple in Whitefield. We watched one group from Ramgondanahalli carry their idol through the streets. Here is the back view, complete with flags.

And here is the front view, complete with drummers. Can you see the money pinned to the idol? The 100 rupee notes are at the top; 10 and 20 rupee notes are pegged to a string near the bottom.