Singapore's Chingay parade holds on waterway for first time
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E-mail Xinhua, February 4, 2012
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Performers march on the waterway during the Chingay Parade in Singapore, Feb. 3, 2012. Singapore's multicultural street parade Chingay, which has been held since 1973, was held on a 360-meter waterway for the first time on Friday evening. (Xinhua/Then Chih Wey) |
Singapore's multicultural street parade Chingay, which has been held since 1973, was held on a 360- meter waterway for the first time on Friday evening.
The waterway was made specially for the parade to hold ankle- deep water for the performers to make a splash. More than 8,000 volunteer performers from over 100 organizations participated in the street parade. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong was the guest of honor on Friday evening.
It started with various styles of dragon dancing, including those by the local performance groups as well as the human dragon dancers from Zhanjiang, China, which uses no props but their own bodies to create the image of an auspicious dancing dragon.
An 88-meter long flying dragon and a 35-meter flying phoenix also appeared above the street in the downtown area of Marina Bay, as different floats proceeded on the waterway.
Next came the multicultural performance groups such as the stilt walkers and dances by the local Chinese, Malay and Indian communities.
International performance groups from places such as Japan, Egypt and China's Taiwan also participated in the parade, which has been known as a platform for the international groups to showcase their cultures.
An Indonesian cultural performance put on a spectacular performance with their tradition of showing gratitude to the Earth and their deities.
About 1,000 performers put on a show of the taichi wushu fan performance, while many members of the local community produced colorful dragons, each made from 800 hand-made ribbons.
Thirty contestants in the beauty pageant Bride of the World also participated in the parade watched by some 40,000 audience at the scene and many more on television.
The theme of the parade was "love, care and kindness everywhere. " In the grand finale, visually-impaired Chinese singer Yang Haitao and local singer Joi Chua led the crowd to sing "Love will make you see." Typical of Chinese New Year celebrations, there were also the fireworks.
Chingay is a word phonetically borrowed from the dialect in Hokkien or Fujian, China, meaning the art of costume and masquerade. It evolved from celebrations in the southern part of China during the Lunar New Year, or Spring Festival. The Chingay Parade in Singapore has been held each year since 1973 and has now evolved to become a multicultural parade involving different ethnic communities in the city state.
The parade will be repeated on Saturday evening.
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