Amid the dancing dragons, glittering with thrown confetti, accompanied by the sound of booming drums, many minds were on politics as celebrants welcomed the Chinese Year of the Dog at the nineteenth Annual Lunar New Year Parade in New York City on February 25th.
The festivities started at noon with the singing of the national anthems of both the United States and China. Then the parade began, started off by members of the NYPD followed by participants carrying the American and Chinese flags.
Chinatown was filled with performers wearing traditional Chinese celebration clothes featuring symbols of good fortune like dragons and the color red.
Beneath soaked ponchos and rain jackets, celebrators wore traditional garb of glittering gold and red, lucky colors in traditional Chinese culture.
Some participants were handing out hóngbāo, which is a little red bag filled with money, as a means of wishing the receivers good luck, prosperity and wellbeing for the year.
Onlookers stood in awe underneath their umbrellas, with laughter and cheers as the parade passed by. The participants in the parade would shoot off confetti cannons, raining glittering confetti at every moment on every bystander they could.
Some stood fast, as the rain was on and off, more took shelter under any roof they could find climbing on ledges of buildings, clinging to the wall avoiding to get soaked.
Others watched from their apartments, windows adorned with Chinese talismans.
Despite the rain, women dressed in glittering garments of yellow and red danced through the puddle-lined streets. The men were dressed in costumes of dragons with bright yellow manes, gold, green and silver scales and as the most predominant color, red.
Dragons were common sights, as they are symbols of good luck and protection in traditional Chinese culture. Large red dogs made of plastic were also being carried by celebrants to welcome in the New Year of The Dog.
Bangladesh native Subarna Dey, who came out to see the event, said: “I was more interested in the dragon dress dance, and that was very fast, and I loved it, and it is very colorful and very similar to our culture.”
Throughout the parade, many onlookers had gotten confetti cannons, whether they had been thrown to them by paraders or purchased from the local shops for a few dollars. As adults and children alike gathered in the square to fire them, the air was filled with the sparkle of white, blue and green confetti in a display that was fun for all ages.
Onlooker Mark Wergan described all the music, motion and color as “fantastical.”
Good luck charms known as mystic knots hung from street lights as another reminder to welcome the new year with good fortune
With the new year rolling in, it isn’t hard to see why there are so many good luck charms in a few blocks.
But in addition to all the festivities, an undercurrent of politics was evident. There was clear support for immigrants in Chinatown, with one speaker calling out to participants, “We know you are under attack in Washington, but we have your back!”
Many people in the streets were waving the Chinese flag alongside the American one to show solidarity with Chinese immigrants in America.
According to an article written by Jie Zong and Jeanne Batalova on the Migration Policy Institute website, Chinese immigrants are the third-largest foreign-born group in America. The United States is the top choice for Chinese immigrants, making up 22 percent of the almost eleven-million Chinese nationals living outside of China.
Chinese-Americans are the second largest immigrant population in the States, according to the 2010 United States Census. It is becoming an increasingly common sight to see a Chinatown in multiple cities across the States, like in New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
But the new political regime in Washington and the President’s antagonistic rhetoric toward China is having an impact. For example, as Lishan Wu, a Mercer student and Chinese immigrant said, “We used to think American government policy is nice to Chinese to immigrant, we don’t feel comfortable, and in this case, if I am in China and I haven’t immigrated to America, I won’t consider.”
Hate crimes against Asian-Americans do not get a lot of coverage by the media even in places where the numbers are high. A report from the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations found that crimes targeting Asian-Americans tripled in that county between 2014 and 2015.
An NPR report by Jenny J. Chen published on February 17 noted that many Chinese immigrant women don’t speak up when they are victims of a hate crime, due to the sensitivity of the hate crimes, making them more vulnerable targets. So statistics on these crimes are likely underinflated.
At this year’s parade, political sentiment was evident in things like the presence of a Chinese American LGBTQ group, with a long rainbow-colored fabric showing their support and signs in both English and Chinese saying, “We honor our families.”
The Asian-Americans Advancing Justice non-profit organization created a new website to document the cases of hate against this population. The website standagainsthatred.org encourages them to tell their stories in order to create more awareness and make them feel comfortable.
A major development in China in the last week is the removal of term limits for the country’s president Xi Jinping which has been met with alarm by activist groups who fear a power grab that will propel the country back toward the era of Mao. But despite all this as the backdrop, the Chinese community still banded together to celebrate the culture and traditions of their heritage using this unity as one way to face political crises in the Year of The Dog.
