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on Kirsten VSO (China), 03/May/2010 12:58, 34 days ago
Last Thursday, I was walking along the main street in town about 8 o'clock in the morning when I saw preparations for a parade. Never one to miss a photo opportunity, I called school to say I wouldn't be coming in and headed home to grab my camera. Once back at the parade area, I started to mingle with the growing crowd as about half a dozen children under 5 were given finishing touches to make-up and costumes.I worked my way to the front and managed to get quite a few good shots of the kids who by this point were beginning to be placed on platforms held shoulder high by yellow clad men. So far, so good. Then I realised that the smallest children had their legs bound to a metal pole and were being hoisted high above the platform and then immobilised there like a lolly on a stick.Some of the kids didn't seem to mind too much but one girl in particular looked terrified. The children were dressed to represent characters from a famous Chinese novel written in the 1590s called "Journey to the West" in English. The "west" in this case is India and it's a fictionalised account of a real journey made by a monk around 560AD who travelled to India to get some sacred texts. In the novel he fights monsters and demons, which I'm guessing maybe didn't happen on the original journey...I was told that this form of the parade wasn't common any more as "lots of parents don't want their children tied to a pole." Instead, many parades use a van with children standing on the roof. Probably marginally more user-friendly than the Danfeng version...The end of the parade had a lot of other performers - singers, drummers and other musicians.