Huang Yulian, in the United States with her family for the first time, picked a good time of year to visit as she landed amid the festive Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan.

"We are visiting New York for the first time, actually the US for the first time," said Huang, who is from Xi'an, in Northwest China's Shaanxi province.

"My sister used to live in New York, so she recommended we come to the parade, and it's not far away from our hotel," Huang said.

"I never saw such a thing in China - the balloons, the marchers, the floats and all the performers. I saw pictures before, but actually being here, I feel totally different and surprised."

Huang was with her 6-year-old son, Zhezhe, at Herald Square and 35th Street, near where the parade concluded and also where all the performances took place. She said he loves the animated Disney movie Frozen, although he wasn't too happy with the cold. The temperature in New York on Thursday was around 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

Because of its many cartoon-character floats, the parade is a favorite of youngsters.

"We are from Texas we decided to come to New York for the parade three months ago," said Andrew Byers, who arrived in Manhattan on Wednesday evening with his wife and three children. "It's crazy, and my kids loved it - they enjoyed it very much."

The 91st annual parade featured the customary colorful giant balloons, marching bands and floats and a tight layer of security, as millions of spectators gathered along the route.

Seventeen giant balloons such as Olaf from Frozen and Chase from the cartoon Paw Patrol made their way down the wide avenues. There were 28 "legacy balloons", "balloonicles", "balloonheads" and "trycaloons"; 26 floats; 1,100 cheerleaders and dancers; more than 1,000 clowns; 12 marching bands and six performance groups, according to ABC News.

Smokey Robinson, The Roots, Flo Rida and Wyclef Jean were among the musical stars performing, along with the casts of Broadway's Anastasia, Dear Evan Hansen and SpongeBob SquarePants. The line-up included a dozen marching bands, as well as the high-kicking Radio City Music Hall Rockettes and Santa Claus.

The revelry took place less than a month after an Oct 31 terror attack in which a man drove a rented truck onto a bike path in Lower Manhattan, killing eight people.

Mindful of that carnage and a shooting on Oct 1 in Las Vegas in which 58 people were killed at a country music festival, the NYPD took extra precautions to make sure the parade was safe.

Officers with assault weapons, portable radiation detectors, bomb-sniffing dogs, sharpshooters on rooftops and sand-filled city sanitation trucks were deployed to defend the 2.5-mile (4-km) parade route from the Upper West Side to Herald Square in Manhattan.

The parade was expected to draw an estimated 3.5 million spectators and 50 million television viewers.

Debuting in 1924 to celebrate the expansion of the Macy's department store in Manhattan, the parade was originally billed as a Christmas parade to kick off the holiday shopping season. It also plays a prominent role in the 1947 Christmas classic movie Miracle on 34th Street.

AP contributed to this story.

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(China Daily 11/24/2017 page2)