Each week, we'll feature an especially interesting event in the neighborhood based on the event submissions we get, and what we hear about while we're out on the beat. If you want to be considered for next week, please submit your event here.
Gung hay fat choy! The Lunar New Year—the Year of the Monkey, 4714—began on Feb. 8th, and the city will celebrate at the Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year Festival and Parade, which will be held in the FiDi and Chinatown from 5:15–8pm Saturday. (Check the route map for information on street closures.)
The Chinese New Year Parade is one of the city's oldest traditions, dating to the 1860s, and it's said to be the largest Asian event outside of Asia.
Map: Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year Parade & Festival
The parade celebration will feature more than 100 colorful units, including elaborate floats and costumes, marching bands, martial arts groups, stilt walkers, acrobats, exploding firecrackers and more than 100 men and women from the martial arts group White Crane carrying the 268-foot-long Golden Dragon ("Gum Lung") through the streets. (You can get a sneak peek at the dragon this week by visiting 1 Embarcadero Center, where it's set up inside a vacant storefront near Battery and Clay streets, behind the Comerica Bank.)
Golden Dragon at 1 Embarcadero Center. (Photo: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline)
In conjunction with the parade, about 500,000 people will be in the vicinity for this weekend's Chinatown Community Street Fair, which runs 10am–4:30pm Saturday and 9am–5pm Sunday. It'll include entertainment like drumming, dancing and opera; cultural arts such as calligraphy, folk dance, and lantern and kite making; and more than 80 booths for shopping.
The Chinese Culture Center inside the Hilton Financial District (750 Kearny St., third floor) will also host an indoor Spring Festival from 11am–2pm Saturday, with dance, martial arts and other family-friendly fun.
Chinatown resident Wilma Pang shared a few details of Chinese New Year traditions with us. The new year falls on a new moon, she said, so the parade is typically held a couple of weeks after that during the full moon, when it's brighter outside.
During this time in China, people celebrate the Lantern Festival, which signifies the end of a rest period for farmers and time to go back to the fields. Lantern Festivals are also sort of a Chinese answer to Valentine's Day, where girls and boys meet and check each other out.
Wilma Pang. (Photo: Geri Koeppel/Hoodline)
Here in San Francisco, Pang said, Chinese New Year is a big time for family associations to gather. "It's a kinship; getting together with relatives and friends," she said.
But now that most large banquet-style restaurants in Chinatown have closed, it's more difficult to find space. Pang noted that Far East Cafe and New Asia Restaurant are the only two that can seat hundreds of guests, now that places like Empress of China and Gold Mountain Restaurant have folded. "You have to reserve space way ahead due to the shortage of big restaurants," she said. As a result, New Year banquets can sometimes run all the way into April.
Now for a few other events taking place in the FiDi and surrounding neighborhoods this coming week:
To check out more local events around the city, visit hoodline.com/events.
