Dragon Dance Competition (picture heavy)

This past weekend we (the consulate community) were invited to a day of activities sponsored by the Pujiang government.  The whole day of events was 14 hours, but our clever Community Liason Officer finagled a way for a few of us to just go for a three hour section of dragon dance competition and tangerine picking.  The whole day looked like it was chock full of fun, but I'm glad we were only there for three hours.  The crowd was enormous!  We entered the city, and it looked like a ghost town, there were a few stores open here and there, but the wide streets and storefronts were virtually deserted.  We couldn't figure out where any of the people were....until they stopped the bus.  As we left our buses and were hurried towards the VIP seating area for the competition we walked through a corridor of Chinese at least ten people deep and elbow to elbow  for at least 100 hundred yards (and that was just a small section on the crowd I think the buses plowed through half the crowd to get us as close as possible) it was like walking down the sidelines of a packed football stadium. Oh yeah, and there was a line of police holding the crowds back too.  The performances (once they finished ALL of the speeches) were pretty interesting and creative too.  Many of them put together to depict scenes from famous Chinese folk tales (well famous to the Chinese, I have no idea why there were tons of bulls being pushed around by a fat guy fighting soldiers).  Anyway, here are some pictures to enjoy!