Recalling back when I was an audience in the Chingay Parade 2013, it was a memorable experience that I will be happy to share. Basically, the event I attended was at 23rd of February and it took place at the Formula One (F1) Marina Bay Street Circuit route. About Chingay, its name was created from its Hokkien dialect that defines “art of costume and masquerade” that celebrates the strength of the human spirit in the face of life’s challenges. It is like an annual street parade that will be held in Malaysia and Singapore in celebration with the birthdays of the Chinese deities or the procession of the Goddess of Mercy as part of traditional Chinese New Year. For every year, there will be a suitable theme for the parade. This year, it is themed ‘Fire in Snow’. It presents fire as a symbol of resilience, bravery, perseverance, passion and determination. Also, snow symbolises challenges and hardships so to overcome the fire’s lights of hope.
My siblings and I settled down at 7:30pm with our snacks and drinks we bought in Raffles City. I observed that majority of the audiences in different race has get on their spot as well. Soon after, the parade starts at 8pm with the emcees’ introduction and brief explanation about Chingay and its history followed by the arrival of VIPs including Singapore’s current president, Mr Tony Tan with his wife, Mdm Mary Chee. Next, the emcees tried testing the crowd with what we called the ‘Kallang Wave’. “Whoa!” I can literally see the wave flowing from one end of the sector to the other end in seconds. Personally, I think that it is an appropriate thing to test the crowd as you will see the obvious impact. Next, the atmosphere was starting to get overwhelmed as 1,000 burning used woks and pots started to light-up the entire lane without the spotlights on. Later, large groups of performers in their specific cultural costumes started to invade the F1 pit lane with excitement. The audiences were holding onto their ‘Pom Poms’ and blowing their given whistles to welcome the performers. The motivators were like cheering the audiences on and ‘screaming their lungs out’. The cheer begins like “Chingay, Chingay, we are one! People, people, we are one! Parade, parade, we are one! Singapore, Singapore, we are one!” It keeps all of our excitement pumped up.
I observed that the performers are from different respective organisation and association. Just one organisation, we can assume that there will be a handful of performers. Under different organisation, we will see many cultural costume designs and dance steps. In fact, the six-part segment will involve approximately 10,000 performers from 120 organisations. When the performers from different organisations were all dancing and grooving along to the harmonious songs, it was absolutely colourful. That is the unique thing of the parade! The colours, designs, decorations and costumes totally mesmerized us. In addition, there was decorative moving ‘hua che’. It is mainly a moving car in different shapes that has LED lights wrapped around it. Also, the ‘hua che’ is big enough to occupy a small group of people onto it while it’s moving along the F1 pit lane. The spectacular skyline with the Singapore Flyer can’t stop the audiences from snapping pictures of it in conjunction to the parade. Many of us were tuning in to the songs with the performances; it’s more than just a parade. It’s more like witnessing a combination of party, skit and parade.
At the end of the parade, we witness SNOW as the theme for 2013 is ‘Fire in Snow’. It was an extraordinary sight as the past few years; the theme does not have any snow in the parade. It will be one of the unusual scenery experienced on that day in Singapore. That will be a wonderful way to end the Chingay Parade 2013. All of us perspired even though we didn’t really get active during the parade. It must be the adrenaline in us that helps to regulate our heart beat rate that caused us to perspire but we enjoyed it throughout. In this event, people like the student volunteers, motivators, light and sound in-charge, emcees and the audiences came together as one and played a part to make this event a successful one.
For your information, Chingay Parade 2013 celebrates its 41st anniversary this year as it first started out during the year 1973. Ultimately, I sensed high positive energy around and it’s a good way to welcome the Year of Snake. In conclusion, it’s a gain to attend this extravaganza as its Asia's largest annual street procession of floats. Therefore, it will be highly recommended to people that appreciates multicultural traditional performance.
No comments:
Post a Comment