Watch Fresno’s Chinatown kick off The Year of Snake with elaborate lion dance
The annual Chinese New Year festivities energized Fresno’s Chinatown on Saturday as hundreds of Fresnans crowded the historic neighborhood to watch a lion dance parade and toast to a prosperous year ahead for local businesses.
Firecrackers rang out to kickstart the performance outside Central Fish Company. Dancers from a local martial arts school wielded a pair of gold and silver painted furry lion heads draped in red and pink hair, prancing and pouncing and mimicking lions’ movements on the hunt.
The “prey” were heads of lettuce, which is pronounced “Sheng Cai” in Chinese and means generating wealth. The lions bowed down after “eating” the lettuce and received red envelopes from merchants with donations as a token for sharing good fortune.
The parade marched along Kern, F, and Tulare streets to 13 other Chinatown businesses with the steady beating of gongs and drums.
“Every year during Chinese New Year, we do lion dances for local businesses, spread good luck, scare away bad spirits, and hopefully they have good businesses here,” said Luan Nguyen, leader of the Long Fist Kung Fu Association. “Having so many people here is very surprising, it’s really nice to see the audience have fun.”
As the anchor of Chinatown, Central Fish Company has been around for 75 years and has witnessed the community through ups and downs. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a bustling neighborhood with a variety of stores and restaurants packed with diverse immigrants working on the railroads and nearby farms.
However, the city’s urban renewal in the 1960s heavily disrupted the community. Highway 99 cut through the neighborhood and left torn-down buildings. The City of Fresno is currently renewing water and sewer mains as part of its efforts to revitalize Chinatown. The city wants to attract residents, businesses and tourists by building affordable housing and completing the state’s beleaguered High-Speed Rail project.
Morgan Doizaki, owner of the Central Fish Company, said the city’s construction has impacted businesses a lot, and he hopes the community organizers could bring back the line dancers that used to “coincide with the parade” because “it’s very important to keep some tradition.”
Monica Valero, community development marketing specialist at the Chinatown Fresno Foundation, said the parade has been a Chinatown annual event for more than four decades. The foundation took over planning the Chinese New Year festivities because local property and business owners wanted to continue the tradition.
“This is a Chinese cultural tradition and people want to immerse themselves within the culture. Once you see them perform, you want to continually see them perform,” said Valero.
Many spectators during the lion dance were dressed in red, which represents joy and celebration in Chinese culture. Some families dressed their children in Chinese traditional jackets or Tiger Hats.
“It’s our first time here, my son is actually very into the Chinese New Year celebrations, he does dragon dance at home all the time,” said Pancho Lopez, a Clovis father of four.
His son, 5-year-old Nico, wore a red lion head hoodie. His eyes fixated on the lion dancers as they made their way to each store.
“How cool was that?” said Lopez, turning to his son as fireworks set off during the lion dance. “Are you excited about the dancing and the fireworks?”
