chinatown

San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade 2025!

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On the Subway we are wondering how all the groups are going to make a snake costume. We have seen cute monkeys, pigs, and rabbits but are having difficulty imagining a cute snake on our way to the Chinese new year parade 2025.

Coming out of the underground with most of the train, ascending the escalator, we can hear the drums, gaining momentum. The air is festive. It’s friendly all around.

We get to our desired spot and eventually edge our way in to the front next to the fence. Placement at the parade is paramount. At our corner, there are those lining the pavement, others standing on utility boxes, and a bunch of youth on a scaffolding where a building is being upgraded.

As soon as we are in place we begin the wave. We wave at everyone and everyone waves back. It’s agreed. We are celebrating life together. I am waving at beautiful women in beautiful costumes, at little kids playing their drums, at high school and college bands in full regalia with trimmed sashes and white tipped shoes. It is a night of forgiveness. We even wave at the casino ladies and the politicians in red mustangs.

There are illuminated dragons chasing pearls galore and innovative homemade 20’ long snakes. There are cool guys with green rimmed lights on the bottom of their shoes, which make them look like they are levitating as they run through their martial art routine.

The real martial artists are the ones on the scaffolding. I watch them get to the fire escape of the adjacent building. They move up from the first to the second to the third etc. until they are at the eighth floor when the scaffolding changes to a very long thin ladder which reaches the roof. I watch them until they get to the ladder and then I can’t look anymore.

A group of elementary school kids are dressed as Mahjong pieces. It is like the game board is tumbling down the street. I look back up and I can’t see the kids on the scaffolding anymore.

The best fun is to get “kissed” by a lion’s furry eyelash because it’s great good luck. That’s why you have to be up against the fence. I got kissed.

Then the red Lucky shopping cart rolls by. It is way gigantic, so the many people inside it look tiny, like a Gulliver’s Travel adventure.

On the subway home there is a kid in an appropriately sized stroller. He can see himself in the opposite glass. He is waving happily at himself and himself is waving back.

Chinese New Year Parade etc

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Hundreds of thousands people hit the streets to watch the lunar new year parade. It doesn’t seem like that many when you are there. Every year we go over the Bay on BART (the subway) and arrive before 4 to stake out our place somewhere on the route. We are not the first ones there by far.

Why we do this every year is for the magic. All of these people are there committed to being happy. The people in the parade who are not preforming are waving and we are waving back. We are all smiling. It’s not like you are waving to a real person, you are waving to whatever they are representing. We have all agreed to that. This became most alive for me as I waved to a young guy in his twenties dressed up like a fire-cracker. I was waving to a live fire cracker, all red and gold.

The thousands of children in the schools marching ARE what they are representing. The awesome beauty and innocence of the littlest ones is breathtaking. Especially when you are inches away, which we were, being first row in the bleachers.

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 These are my kids and their friends. The three on the right: my daughter, Joan and Mies decide to go get a hot drink as it is freezing, especially on the metal seats sitting still. It used to be that all of the shops in Chinatown were Chinese owned but that was decades ago. They wander into one of the Arab stores with ugly glass and sentimental life sized bronze sculptures. Joan, who is editor of the high school newspaper which is nationally known and awarded (for over 100 years!) and the daughter of Harvard graduates decides to change the film in her film camera in this store. Suddenly a large man swoops in and looms over her. He has seen her put something in her pocket and accuses her of shoplifting. She pulls the empty film canister out of her pocket and is released. She tells me how awkward it was and how she felt guilty until proven innocent. I thought about how the US makes arabs feel that way all the time so I guess an arab in a store making a blond white girl feel that way is just par for the course.

Despite the non-chinese owned tourist shops, you can still be born, live your entire life and die in Chinatown and never speak english. The three finally find a restaurant. It is the only one they can find open. They are the only white people in there. Everyone else is Chinese and many of them are getting free food for having been in the parade. The waiter does not speak english. He does not understand what they mean by a hot drink. It is not on the menu so they can not point to it. They do not order tea because they want hot chocolate. They settle on steamed milk. When it comes it is cold. After they pay their bill, the two glasses still sit  on the table where the waiter has placed them. White and cold.

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