Double Ten Parade in Boston

So the parade came out in full force today despite the rain. I didn't bring our little head, or our uniforms, or Jonah for that matter, because I wasn't sure what to expect. We got into to Chinatown right at the head of the Parade so we got to watch it pass, which is the best way to watch of course. There was a dragon and a children's lion dance group with five heads. Gung Ho was out there, the Kuomintang and Veteran Groups. (Indeed there are still Old Mainland Chinese American vets alive who fought in WWII for Kuomintang) There were the Taiwanese students that started screaming when they saw us because we had come with our Taiwanese flags already and were among the first spectators they saw. There was a marching band, and then we saw Woo Ching White Crane and slipped into the Parade. Behind Wo Ching WHite Crane was a Revotutionary war reenactment group that was firing off muskets. This was exteremely cool. But it was also loud enough for me to feel a little pressure on my eardrums. Which would be alright for me, but Noah was in the stroller with me so I moved up to the front. And watched the parade pass again. At the end there was Wah Lum and I think Chiu Moh Goon as well. At City Hall there was the flag ceremony the anthems and  brief speeches by politicians.. and Michelle Wu was there, speaking Mandarin fluently, because of course her parents are Taiwanese.
We watched the aboriginal and Chinese dances and drumming and basically stayed until the end. It was very crowded at first but the crowd thinned out. I wanted the memory to be etched into Noah's mind. I have Double Ten memories etched into mine and I'm not Taiwanese. I think my Grandfather might have been Governor of Canton under the ROC government and actually fled to Taiwan (leaving my his fourth wife/concubine and my grandmother and my dad behind.) They fled to Hong Kong at some point. There was no reunion that I know of but there were letters back and forth between relatives that I hope I still have somewhere. In other words Double Ten means something more to me than "Golden Week" which means nothing to me at all since my ancestors were out of there before China became Red. But my Chinese ancestors were more like stories told to me than actual flesh and blood relatives. Even my dad died when I was four. But my mother made sure I was as Chinese as she could make me.
And I'm not Taiwanese, and Noah and Jonah do have their Gong Gong, A Mah, and other Taiwanese relatives, as well as Taiwanese friends of the family. But there not living with us now, so I'm going to make my kids as Taiwanese as I can, which basically means Noah and I went to Double Ten.

I got comments on the Subway going there by a Taiwanese woman (who spoke English like an American) and on the way back from a White Woman who had seen the parade and was shocked by how large it was. She didn't think Boston had so many Taiwanese. I explained to her that it wasn't just for Taiwan, but the 1911 overthrow of the Qing Dynasty.