Year of the Dragon!
One of the coolest celebrations of the multicultural Bay Area is the Chinese New Year Parade. Although last year’s parade, for the Year of the Hare, (I am a Metal Hare; Interestingly, in the related Vietnamese zodiac, the cat takes the place of the hare!) was marred by rain, the parade tonight in San Francisco had beautiful weather to celebrate the Year of the Dragon – this year, a Water Dragon. Water Dragon years occur every 60 years. The parade was covered by KTVU which has a CNY (Chinese New Year) tab here (with links to videos) and 32 still images of the parade HERE. The Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco is the 10th-largest one in the WORLD (the largest one outside of Asia), and this year it hosted the longest dragon outside of Asia!
The Chinese Year 4710 Parade kicked off with the lighting of 50,000 firecrackers by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, the first Asian-American mayor of San Francisco, and dancers from Habei, China (video), who performed at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing (check this out)!
This year’s parade featured an overhead camera-on-a-cable (as seen at professional football games) for the first time, which really added to the coverage. Although we have seen the Chinese New Year’s Parade in person, this year we watched the TV coverage. KTVU will replay the parade tonight at 9 PM Pacific, and again tomorrow.
If you don’t have a large Chinese (or Chinese-American) community and Chinese New Year Parade, please help yourself to views of the videos of our parade!
Gung Hay Fat Choy!
-Bill at
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