The Spring Festival begins with the Chinese Lunar New Year and runs two weeks, ending with the Lantern Festival. We celebrated at Yu Garden along with several million of our closet neighbors. The plazas were decorated with brightly lit, colorful ‘balloon-like’ animatronic creatures. Of course, the dragon was the favorite display. Overhead, hundreds of elaborate lanterns formed a canopy against the night sky. The crowd was intimidating, and at one point, I was caught in a human eddy which swirled me backwards and Fred forwards at an alarming speed. But all was well in the end, and it was a beautiful sight.