A few weekends ago, here in Singapore, the Chingay Parade was held. The Chingay Parade usually happens after the Lunar New Year and has already grown quite big. The location varies from year to year, but it seems that the organizers have found a favorable route. It used to be held along Orchard Road, but it seems that the city hall area of Singapore is a nice location. It is big and wide enough to accomodate the participants and the viewers.
The Chingay parade started in Singapore in 1973 as a float parade. It was originally done as part of the Lunar New Year celebrations. It roots started as a float design competition in Penang, Malaysia, the practice that spread throughout the Malay peninsula, including Singapore. Since then the Chingay parade has grown and now included delegations from various countries in the region.
This year was no different. It was still held at the Padang area with lots of space for photographers. There is a paid section which is right along the sidewalk, so you can get to see the performers up close. I didn’t want to pay so much for the parade, so I just went with the free section. As in any major event in Singapore, if you want to get good photos, you need to find a good spot fast. I found a spot along the street where the performers would pass but it is unlikely that they would stop and perform for me. At least I was close enough to the performers.
After two hours of waiting at my spot, there was a huge group of dragon dancers which basically parked their dragon right in front of me. This made me think twice of my spot, since I didn’t know whether they will leave or not. After a while they started inserting joss sticks all over the dragon. Giving it the impression that it was on fire. Happily enough, they soon made their way to the main performing stage. Now that the parade was about to start I prepared my camera. It will be dark when the parade starts so blurry photos are almost guaranteed unless you have a high end lens or camera which hand handle it.
The parade kicks off with the huge noise of exploding firecrackers in following it Lunar New Year roots. As the first floats starting coming down the street, the support group of the dragon dancers started gathering in front of us and basically watching the parade. This really annoyed me since they were the performers and the know that there were people right behind them. For the first few groups of performers, we didn’t get too many nice shots since there were a lot of people right in front of us. However, when their dragon finally came they joined in and followed the rest of the parade. Whew!
Now that we got them out of the way, we finally can get a lot of photos. One by one the performers dressed in colorful costumes walked down the road. Some of the participants will perform some dances in front of us. While some of the others would just walk right past us. I wasn’t sure if that was part of the plan since we were all at the “free” section, which meant that we did not deserve any performance. However, I could say most of them had some performance.
Most of the participants were students from various schools in Singapore. However there was also a sizable foreign delegation coming from India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan, Korea, Europe and the Philippines. Most of the foreign delegation expectedly performed native dances on the street while dressed in their native costumes. Since Singapore has a fairly sizable foreign community, this was a great idea.
As the parade drew on, I got tired of seeing them just walk right past us. Sure their costumes were great but a lot of them didn’t really tried engaging the crowd. Some of the groups would pass along free stuff, like fans and red packets. I would grab some and then some more to bring back to the office.
At the end of the parade, there was a fireworks display, but I didn’t find it impressive at all. I think the National Day fireworks we much better than this one. Overall, I think the Chingay parade was a nice parade and it shows that much preparation went into the parade. I can’t count how many times I’ve seen this parade, but you can be sure that I will still be here in the parade next year.
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