Chinese New Year celebration in Manchester

On the 22nd February my friends and I decided to go celebrate the Chinese New Year in Manchester in a place they call China Town. I've always wanted to visit China and my friend is from Hong Kong so I thought why not go along.

We arrived at the centre of Manchester from Piccadilly Station. The centre of Manchester is nice, plenty of shops and people but that was nothing unexpected. The only thing that took me by surprise were the trams as I didn't know they had them there and failing to notice the tram lines nearly got taken away by one! I wouldn't say the city is a vibrant as Nottingham or Leeds but it had some really nice modern buildings as you can see in the picture.

This fine, valiant knight agreed to have me pose with him!

On our way we were invited to try out what it's like to be in a virtual reality, something arranged by FIAT. It was very strange as everything in the scene with the glasses on seemed so real and 3-D and when you looked around it was like you were looking in real life seeing things from the angles you would see them from in reality. Very strange.

We found ourselves roped in to one of the fair ground games after the instructor told us that all we have to do is throw 2 balls into the bucket. It seemed so easy so we had a go and £8 later still couldn't get 2 balls in. The trick was that the balls had some kind of boomerang effect where they kept coming straight back out. Anyway in the end the person running the stall gave us 2 extra free goes and in the end we won the bear! Which we spent the rest of the day lugging around and being the envy of many toddlers.

The dragon parade began. Unfortunately due to icy, finger and toe biting conditions we couldn't stick around for long but with was interesting to see the dragon dance, which is something traditionally Chinese were people go underneath a dragon costume so it seems like a dancing dragon. What makes it even better for me is the drums and the symbols played in the background that gives it a real parade feel.

One of the stalls where we lined up with a lit splint to make a wish. I love cultural traditions like this and the decorations were great, can't wait the visit China one day!

The rest of the day was great, as you can see in the background there were plenty of stalls that were selling food and Chinese items. The picture underneath is of the dragon parade coming into the restaurant we ate in.

So that was my day in Manchester celebrating the Chinese New Year. It was a great day out and small insight into Chinese culture and despite the dismal English weather there was still a jovial  atmosphere. It's certainty something to do for a great day out, it was nice being able to celebrate and appreciate the Chinese tradition.