I woke up late at 10:00, on Saturday, February 24, the day that Chinatown in The Hague celebrates Chinese New Year’s. Thinking I missed the dragon and lion dance as the program posted online only mentioned the dance in the morning during the event at City Hall. When I went out to get lunch (sushi from the grocery store, it’s pretty decent and a bag of frozen gyoza from the Asian grocery store), I saw they were diverting cars for the parade. I went home, stored my food and went back out with my Fuji X-T2.

I feel lucky to be living in Chinatown all these years. It’s a diverse neighbourhood with many nationalities, all the traditional Chinese restaurants are situated here and there is also a Chinese bakery. Not to mention several unique shops like Chinese medicine, a grocery store, a Caribbean bodega and several other cuisines such as Japanese, Thai, Korean and Indo. All a stone’s throw away from each other.

Weather-wise it was not a good day for taking photos. It was grey, not a hint of sun or shadows. Your quintessential Dutch winter weather. I ended up two hours outside in the cold with no gloves on hoping to see something. Being 1.56cm in a land of giants makes it hard to view parades or anything really. It was so crowded. I about gave up and started walking home when the parade found me. They were doing the Lion dance, they would stop at participating businesses, play the drums, light firecrackers, and the lions would dance and eat lettuce. Then a short break while they moved on to the next business. Once I was in the middle of it I had an almost clear view of everything.

It was a fun two hours, once I got ahead of the crowd. The drums were so loud that even though I am completely deaf my ears were ringing and I had the worst case of earworm after. I did not get any pastry or any celebration food to eat. Way too busy to go get something plus I still had my sushi waiting at home.