I beamed a smile of straight, glistening teeth only a 16-year-old with freshly removed braces can have. My preschool best friend, Lauren, sat next to me on the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade float with equally enthusiastic energy.
After years of attending this annual tradition, this was our first time actually getting to be in the parade. We waved to the crowd below, who lined both sides of the street for miles. They waved back, bundled up and not minding the dark chill of February. We weren’t famous or decked out in festive costumes or beautiful dresses, yet the crowd loved making eye contact with us and waved harder when we looked at them. The SF Chinese New Year Parade is one of those precious city pride moments where the community comes together to celebrate something special, and everyone seems happy to simply be there. It also symbolizes Chinatown’s community strength and its continuing fight for survival.
Without any beautiful dresses on, clearly, Lauren and I weren’t part of the Miss Teen Chinatown court. Rather, we were shining alumni of the city’s first bilingual preschool, Wah Mei School, which offered pioneering instruction in both English and Cantonese (now also Mandarin, catering to the city’s shifting population). We joined members of other graduating classes ranging from the mid-1970s through the present day, which was 1999 at the time of my one-time parade glory. The experience made me proud to be a Chinese American child of San Francisco. Echoing the cultural symbolism of the parade itself, Wah Mei School was also a true San Francisco Chinese American creation.
Known as the largest Chinese New Year parade outside of Asia, with more than 1 million people in attendance annually, San Francisco’s version has been a cultural fixture for more than 150 years. Parades aren’t traditionally Chinese, but SF’s version started as a small procession during the 1860s Gold Rush era when the growing Chinese community in San Francisco wanted to showcase its culture in an attempt to mitigate xenophobic hostility. After the 1906 earthquake decimated Chinatown, the area was rebuilt with an intention to attract tourists for economic stimulation, and the parade became an instrumental part of that goal. Since the Chinese Chamber of Commerce officially took charge of the parade in 1958, it has grown into the entity of both Chinatown and the citywide pride it is today. It’s closely linked to the Miss Chinatown USA pageant, street fairs, and sporting events held during a two-week festival around Chinese New Year.
Numerous lion dance troupes are hallmarks of the parade, with their festive colors, strong percussive rhythms, acrobatic jumps, cheeky audience play, lucky lettuce feeding, and firecracker displays converging to provide bundles of sensory delight. Attracting groups from across the nation, the parade also features marching bands, dance troupes, and community organizations like my preschool alma mater. The two-hour parade always ends with the massive golden dragon that is nearly 300 feet long and needs 100 people to carry it. Aside from having been in the parade, I grew up watching it with my family and always enjoyed seeing who we knew in it each year.
Officially, San Francisco refers to the holiday as the Chinese New Year, which falls on February 12 this year. However, a few other Asian countries celebrate the same new year, as they also follow the lunar calendar (technically “lunisolar”), like Vietnam, Korea, Mongolia, and Tibet. The more inclusive term as of late is Lunar New Year. San Francisco’s old Chinese roots and current Chinese American population — which makes up over 20% of the city — is likely why the city and many others here still refer to Lunar New Year as Chinese New Year.
In 2020, just a few weeks before the Bay Area went into shelter-in-place, an eerie uneasiness started to blanket the world in the unknown of the coronavirus. Still, San Francisco fiercely held the Chinese New Year Parade — partly because there were only a handful of reported Covid-19 cases here (oh, what we’ve learned since then), and partly as a statement against the anti-Chinese and anti-Asian xenophobia that Chinatowns and individuals of Asian descent started experiencing across the nation in the early weeks of the pandemic. Little did we know that the Chinese New Year Parade would be the last major city street celebration of 2020.
2021, the Year of the Ox, will have to be without this San Francisco tradition in person; the celebrations will be relegated to the virtual space just as most events of the past year have been. The main event will be on February 20, and 11 life-sized, art-covered oxen will be on display throughout the city until March 14 as part of the festivities. Other Chinese New Year virtual events will also take place over the next few weeks, such as Chinatown neon sign and restaurant tours sponsored by the Chinese Historical Society of America. As with Pride and Folsom Street Fair, parade event organizers are still putting hopeful energy into the long-standing festival season, knowing that any semblance of celebration is still better than giving it up altogether.
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The contrast of these virtual affairs to last year’s vibrant street celebration marks a sobering anniversary of the global pandemic whose health, economic, and cultural dominoes are still continuing to fall and upend our lives. While prioritizing public safety is still of the utmost importance, the lack of foot traffic from the parade and other Chinese New Year-related events in Chinatown will continue to be a financial blow to the struggling neighborhood, mirroring the difficulty many Chinatowns are having nationwide.
There are glimmers of hope for the community, however, like the second round of partnership between Chinatown restaurants and SRO residents for Feed + Fuel Chinatown 2.0, sponsored by the Chinatown Community Development Center, SF New Deal, and the city. As for what we can do during the weeks-long activities of Chinese New Year, still consider getting takeout from Chinatown restaurants while enjoying the virtual events. It may be your last chance to order from the iconic Far East Café, one of San Francisco’s few remaining Chinese banquet restaurants — depending on how the recent city funding for Chinatown businesses plays out.
I’ll be tuning into the parade on February 20, eager to see what a reimagined program welcoming the Year of the Ox will look like, as well as reminiscing about what the celebration was, and what it could be in the future. Here’s hoping that this year’s wishes for a prosperous and healthy new year come true.
