Paul had just one day at home, then he was off again to Wyoming. I had 10 or 11 days at home on my own, most of which I spent in bed with the cold and a nasty cough. There was nothing much to get up for anyway, I felt terrible and the monotonous rain fell heavily for most of the time. I wonder if it's time to go somewhere warm in winter?
As I was a bit better by the end of January, and I had a meeting to attend, I got out of bed and went up to London. Before my meeting, I went to see an exhibition at the British Museum, called 'Beyond Eldorado: power and gold in ancient Colombia', which I found very interesting. There were some stunning pieces of gold - this is from the exhibition poster
Much of the art work was quite spectacular, and a surprising amount of it was well over 2000 years old. Gold was only prized because it was the colour of the sun (which was worshipped as a god) and expressed the power of the possessor.
The were other items, such as ceramics, which were even older, dating back as far as 1600 BC. Photography was not allowed, but I did manage to sneak one photo of a ceramic container.
I was only able to spend about an hour there before my back gave out, though the exhibition certainly merited more time. But I've discovered it's much easier to go round exhibitions if you can get hold of the book that contains all the labels in large print. That saves all of the awkward bending down to read the labels and means I don't have to wait until I can actually get near the label, as most exhibitions are very crowded. I certainly enjoyed the exhibition a lot more than I did the meeting which followed, which was really quite difficult and even unpleasant at times.
Sunday Feb 2nd being the day that London was celebrating Chinese New Year, I was quite anxious to go up again to see the parade. I was able to go up on the Saturday evening to stay with my sister and go out with her to the cinema. We were very fortunate that the Sunday was dry and sunny (for a change) and we were up just in time to see the parade. As you might expect, it was led by a dragon.
There were also lions, of course.
These were both much as expected. I didn't expect the horses though.
Of course, it is the year of the horse. I bought a little jade horse which is hanging from my handbag.
There were plenty of other costumes on display - mandarins, or children dressed as monkeys or characters out of Chinese Opera. The crowds were so dense that the parade was hard to photograph though. My sister and I were surprised to see the large numbers of Chinese language schools represented, marching with high numbers of non-Chinese pupils. we thought perhaps the non-Chinese children attending the schools might be from mixed marriages where the parents are anxious that the children do not lose contact with the Chinese language or culture. Or perhaps people just believe Mandarin will be of more use in the future than many languages currently taught in schools.
After the parade, we followed the crowds into Gerrard Street. All of Chinatown had been decorated with lanterns, and there was the constant crackling of small firecrackers. There were none of the long strings of fat red firecrackers we used to see in Hong Kong - they were quite dangerous, so no doubt they aren't allowed here.
The crowds were very thick though, and it was very difficult to walk anywhere, so we made our way to the National Gallery, where we hoped to see the special exhibition of Van Gogh's Sunflowers. We were told the waiting time was over an hour though, so we opted for lunch instead.
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