Celebrating Chinese New Year's in San Francisco (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Two of my Chinese-speaking American friends invited my daughter Florence and me to the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco in 2001. I immediately accepted their offer, because I wanted Florence to know about Chinese culture.
Chinese New Year falls in mid-February. Each year has a different animal featured in
it in addition to the permanent lion dancers and dragon (mythical, but still an
animal). We would be going in the year
of the snake, which would be a year of many long, jostling floats.
San Francisco’s Chinatown was largely created by inhabitants
of China’s southern Guangdong province.
Canton, modern-day Guangzhou, is found close to Hong Kong in Guangdong. The name of the restaurant where we would be
eating was appropriately called the Canton Seafood and Dim Sum Restaurant on
Folsom Street.
It was opened in the 1980s and was my family’s favorite
restaurant in Chinatown. My favorite
dish was clams with black bean sauce.
Florence looked at the clams with black bean sauce and tried
some.
“You can have that all for yourself,” she said.
“We like it,” one of my friends said.
We also ordered prawns with honey walnuts, prawns in lobster
sauce, and Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce.
We had eggrolls to start and rice with our meal. The dishes were served family style – served
on one plate in the middle of the table with each diner taking a portion.
We all ate with chopsticks.
I taught Florence how to use Chinese and Japanese chopsticks at a young
age as well as twirl spaghetti with only a fork. My friends spoke English to order. Mandarin Chinese is understood, but Cantonese
is the language of Chinatown. Mandarin
and Cantonese speakers share a written language, but their spoken languages are
as different as French and Portuguese.
After that delicious and nutritious meal, we took a walk in
Chinatown, which means shopping. We
looked at traditional Chinese clothes for women, bought some Chinese
instrumental music that sounds like water flowing in fountains, and looked at
calligraphy supplies in an art store.
Florence did not want the calligraphy supplies I was trying to get her.
“I do calligraphy in Japanese class at school,” she said. I had Japanese calligraphy supplies at home,
too, but wanted a few things just for Florence.
My calligraphy items would be hers one day, so I did not press the
issue. They were gifts from my Japanese
host family when I was an exchange student in Japan.
We also peeked our heads into a Chinese herbal pharmacy and
wanted to smell the contents in all the jars.
Finally, it was time for the parade to start. We went back to the car and got foldable lawn
chairs and set up by the playground with equipment that looks like pagodas.
Chinese New Year with parades is said to have begun during
China’s Han Dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD).
The inspiration for the lion dancers comes from India. There are over one hundred floats in the
parade, lion dancing troupes, and acrobats that stream along the street for more
than four hours. Firecrackers fill the
breaks between floats.
There are two types of lion costume – a northern and
southern type with many variations within each of the main divisions. Northern lion dance costumes have gold heads
with orange and yellow hair. Southern
lions like those found at the San Francisco New Year Parade feature lions with
papier mâché heads and
bamboo frames with fur decorations.
The southern lion type found at the Parade can be distinguished by
swirling eyes. The teeth pop up as does
the tongue. This type of lion is the Fo
Shan type of lion from Guangdong province.
Different lion styles can be identified by the head decorations.
It is hard to tell the difference between lion dancers and dragon
dancers for first time Parade goers, but there are identification clues. Two people man a lion dance costume where you
can sometimes see their heads. Lion
dancing is very physical and gives its practitioners strength exercise to
practice Chinese martial arts such as Wushu and Kung Fu.
The dragon dancers’ faces can easily be seen as the dragon is held up
on poles. The dragon comes at the end of
the parade and is decorated with lights.
While we were watching the end of the parade, a bat flew overhead.
“Bats are auspicious in Chinese culture,” one of my friends said. I certainly felt lucky just for being able to
see such a great parade.
By Ruth Paget, Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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