One of the booths offered to look up your birth year and tell you what sign or symbol is your birth year - Theresa is a Dog (we agreed more of a puppy) and Bob is a Ram (Pat Hallilgan kept insisting it was sheep). Pat is a rooster. A sheet explained all of the characteristics of each and, just like the horoscope, some was right on and others were "Huh?"
This man played the xiao flute beautifully! he had two instruments in different keys.
This woman played the Guzheng or Chinese harp - a plucked string instrument, similar to a zither and one of the most ancient Chinese musical instruments.
She is clearly not Chinese, showing the bridges built in the American-Chinese community.
This woman played the pipa or Chinese lute.
The player wears small picks on each finger and plucks or strums the strings.
Maybe because of the picks, the pipa sounded more like a banjo to my ear.
A martial arts demonstration was quite impressive as well.
Later in the day, a parade, complete with dragons, came through the stage area.
The dragon teams were young men from UC San Diego.
The dragon dancers were quite athletic and did some very difficult maneuvers such as this on-the-shoulder-very-tall-dragon move.
If you feed the dragon a dollar (that's Theresa with her hand in the dragon's mouth), you'll have good luck all year!
The pole dragon is a little less stressful on the dancers!
(This is the dragon seen in the first photo behind Theresa and me.)
The taiko drummers wore martial arts regalia and were quite animated in their drumming.
The Chinese opera company presented a short vignette about a mother who wants to protect her son, the prince, from a general who wants to use the prince to control the country.
The costumes were very elaborate and beautiful.
The music was quite unusual and sounded falsetto to me.
Theresa and I agreed that as beautiful as the costimes were, this was not our cup of tea.
By the way, the story has a happy ending and Mom ends up with Junior after all.
Next: Bark in the Park - an organ recital at Balboa Park that has definitely gone to the dogs!
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