Spring Festival in Baguio, Ople Day in Bulacan
BAGUIO LION Members of the Baguio Chinese-Filipino community staged a belated Spring Festival parade on Monday, featuring girls on horseback and a lion dance to welcome the Year of the Wooden Horse. The parade is the last of a succession of parades that were staged here during the long weekend. EV ESPIRITU/INQUIRER NORTHERN LUZON
BAGUIO CITY—Classes in elementary and high schools in the city were suspended on Monday afternoon for the Spring Festival parade, which was staged on an unusually warm day after weeks of nippy weather.
Temperature in the summer capital hit 14.8 degrees Celsius on Monday morning but rose to 18 degrees as the Chinese New Year parade started at past 2 p.m.
On Sunday, when Baguio hosted the Ibaloy Festival parade, the mercury rose to 15 degrees after the relatively cold 9 degrees that greeted the opening parade of this year’s Panagbenga, or the Baguio Flower Festival, the day before.
Bulacan province also celebrated a nonworking holiday on Monday to honor the late Labor Secretary and Sen. Blas Ople on his 87th birth anniversary.
A native of Hagonoy town, Ople supported laws protecting the Filipino worker, proposing changes to world policies regarding labor. Ople also shaped the law protecting migrant Filipino workers.
Police closed roads in downtown Baguio for the parade, the last of the succession of parades during the long weekend.
Leaping martial artists and horseback riding girls wearing traditional Chinese attire joined hundreds of participants representing owners and employees of business establishments.
Students of prominent schools owned by Chinese-
Filipino families also took part in the parade, which lasted for more than an hour.
Zhao Qiaoliang, Chinese consul and head of post based in Laoag City, Ilocos Norte province, joined the parade, expressing his country’s willingness to strengthen its friendship with the Philippines.
“I have confidence in the relationship of the Philippines and China,” Zhao told reporters.
Bulacan Gov. Wilhelmino Sy-Alvarado offered flowers at Ople’s monument standing outside Ople Building at the provincial capitol grounds. Reports from Desiree Caluza, Inquirer Northern Luzon, and Carmela Reyes-Estrope, Inquirer Central Luzon
