Sydney over the moon for Chinese New Year parade

A massive crowd is expected for Sydney's Chinese New Year Twilight Parade on Sunday as the festival takes on an iconic quality for Australia's China ready capital. The Year of the Horse promises to be Sydney's biggest celebration of Chinese and Asian culture with over 17 days of non- stop events. It's become something of a point of civic pride that the City of Sydney now hosts Australia's most elaborate and spectacular Chinese New Year celebrations. Clover Moore, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, told Xinhua of her team 's pride and delight. "I'm very, very proud that over the last ten years while I've been mayor the festival's gone from strength to strength. "I think what this festival does is to celebrate who we are and invites all of Sydney and the 200 nationalities living here in Sydney to come and enjoy the Chinese and Asian aspect of our society and our community. So its very educative, culturally rich, fun festival," She said. A cacophony of joyous sounds, music and laughter will be followed by a line of colorful steeds and crowd favorites including giant Chinese dragons, as well as floats from local Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese communities, martial arts performers and much more, with over 2,700 performers and 32 floats for all to admire. Spanning 17 days, Sydney's streets will come to life with the sights, smells and tastes of what is said to be the biggest Lunar New Year celebration outside mainland China and expected to attract more than 600,000 visitors. A highlight of the parade will be 350 world-class performers direct from Beijing, Shaanxi and Hunan in China. In Sydney exclusively for this year's Chinese New Year celebrations, martial artists, acrobats, jugglers, puppeteers, dancers and musicians will wow crowds with their special skills and jaw-dropping performances. The city's buildings will also be lit up with stunning projections wishing revelers a Happy Lunar New Year throughout the evening. Gill Minervini, Sydney's Creative Director, speaking at the Crossing Boundaries exhibition that opened the festival, told Xinhua of the binding power of culture and art. "Art changes the world I think that's why I do what I do. The Lunar parade is like a living art exhibition in a lot of ways and it breaks down barriers, it speaks a universal language and I think a lot can be said for celebrations like this one in terms of changing people's understanding and broadening their horizons. Lord Mayor Clover Moore also said the annual Chinese New Year Twilight Parade was the highlight of the city's Lunar New Year celebrations. "We're expecting over 100,000 people to line the city streets to watch Sydney come to life with the colors and sounds of the Chinese New Year Twilight Parade," the Lord Mayor said. "The parade is a fantastic event to enjoy with family and friends and it's the perfect way to celebrate the diversity of our great city." But it wasn't always this way. The influence of Asia, so evident today, was not yet in the ascension across Australia even ten to fifteen years earlier. As Sydney shrugged off its mono-cultural malaise in the early 1990's, a new fascination and inclusion evolved, the lunar festival providing a lightning rod for the city's growing Asian romance. Gill Minervini told Xinhua about the extraordinary evolution of the new year parade. "It was the first year the parade... there was about hundred people in the parade it was a daytime morning parade. Now we have about 3,000 performers and it's a night time worldwide and world famous event with about 100,000 people watching. "The time we did the parade we had so few people that one of my staff and I had to carry the banner at the beginning of the parade and clearly we're not Chinese so that's just one indication..." she said. Excitement in Sydney has been building all month, and officials are expecting a massive crowd for the keynote event. With a magnificent selection of floats on display at Darling Quarter afterwards, the parade charges out of the gates just after 8 p.m., starting at the Sydney Town Hall and weaving its way through Chinatown before finishing with a fireworks display at the Cockle Bay. Crowds are expected early as the chance to mingle with the performers and to get up close with some of the parade elements afterwards. The Chinese New Year parade is Sydney's chance to show the dragon within and so far, it hasn't disappointed.