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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Chinese New Year Dim Sum & Festival

To celebrate the Chinese New Year I took Daniel for his first taste of Dim Sum. It's a Chinese tradition after all. Yeah we're not Chinese but I'll use any excuse to eat Dim Sum. LOL. I also planned for us to see the Firecracker Ceremony & Cultural Festival also happening in Chinatown. Before leaving I checked with Lai, my Chinese mom, to see if she was also having Dim Sum. She was and asked us to join her, her BF and family. Score!


After fighting my way thru the crowds of people...people refuse to respect the stroller space...I found Lai at the restaurant and took my place waiting on line. Being CNY all the families came out and the place was super crowded. As we waited we watched the Lion/Dragon dancers who were going around blessing the restaurant (and collecting money!) for CNY.



The music surrounding them boomed over us and the colors whirled as the different colored Lion/Dragon passed through the crowd. I should mention that Daniel is still not impressed by the Lion/Dragon. It has to be a Korean thing since they don't have lions or dragons in their culture. But they do have Tigers! That's a story for another time =)


After literally pushing past people we sat at our table and got right to ordering. My friend Lai did all the ordering in Chinese since it's easier. As she rattled off dishes we wanted, I settled Daniel into his chair. He sat very well and just looked around at all the activity. After getting our Dim Sum I chatted with Lai about her recent travel trips while Daniel tried to use the chop sticks everyone else...but me...we're using.


When he started poking people at the table, I quickly took the chop sticks away. Then he decided he'd use my fork instead. Let me tell you it's hard to eat noodle while he's grabbing my fork. Eventually I won the battle but Daniel's a bad loser and started to cry. For the next 3 mins everyone at the table tried all sorts of things to stop his crying. I just ignore it. LOL. Eventually he decided he'd rather get more food then have me ignoring him and stopped.



We finished our meal and left to see the Cultural Festival. We made a quick stop along Mott street to see more Lion/Dragon dancing. The streets were crowd with people shopping and seeing the sights of Chinatown. Many of the stores were beautifully decorated.



We watch Lai's niece's pop tubes of confetti. The streets were filled with confetti since people popped tubes all over the street. Daniel of course also wanted a tube. I gave him an empty tube so he wouldn't feel left out. Of course we posed for more photos while standing there.


Finally we headed over to see the Cultural Festival. Sadly we came a bit late and missed the opening firecracker ceremony and alot of the performances. But we still enjoyed listening to the last few performances. Meanwhile, Daniel decided he was more interested in running around and enjoying the music.



Lai's nieces bought baby dragons along the way and everyone took turns posing with them. I tried once again to get Daniel excited about the dragons. He still wasn't feeln them. Oh well. I made sure he took a photo with them anyway. LOL. After all the dragons are luck bringers.


To end the day Lai gave out the little red envelopes popular during CNY. Woot! Daniels first red filled with money. Daniel shyly took the envelope...good asian kid training...and after a few minutes tried to eat it...bad asian kid training! That was my cue to take my kid home and feed him some more. It was great to enjoy food with friends and family to start the CNY of the Tiger.

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1 comments:

Kristi {at} Live and Love...Out Loud says:
at: February 24, 2010 at 11:44 AM said...

Looks like you all had a busy, yet fun-filled day! I love all the great photos, but now I have a serious craving for dim sum.