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Crowd of 50,000 greets soggy New Year with high spirits
Crowd of 50,000 greets soggy New Year with high spirits
About 50,000 people gathered to watch lion dances, marching bands and multicultural dance troupes wind their way through Vancouver’s Chinatown to usher in the Year of the Rabbit on Sunday.
A constant beat of gongs, bass drums and the occasional burst of firecrackers formed the background music at The Chinese New Year Parade.
The crowd was four or five people thick, lining the route with a snake of coloured umbrellas from Millennium Gate east along Pender Street to Gore Street, and then west on Keefer Street.
Tina Lee brings her two-and-a-half-year-old son Linus Kaminski to the parade every year so that he can learn about his maternal ancestors’ traditions, she said.
Lee grew up in Vancouver, but her parents were born in China.
“We love it!” Lee said. “It’s a nice sense of community and it brings good luck.
Parade coordinator Jun Ing said he’s also heard that watching the parade is lucky.
“It’s good luck to touch a lion, a dragon or a unicorn,” Ing said. “We’ve got about 50 lions, so of course it’s going to be good luck.”
This is the largest assembly of traditional lion-dance teams in Canada, with dozens of colourful and energetic lions from the various local fraternal and martial-arts organizations, organizers said on their website.
Lee said she hopes her son will participate in the parade, perhaps as a lion dancer, when he gets a little older.
Lee said she was impressed to see federal Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was at the parade.
“He shook hands, and gave out red envelopes,” Lee said.
Ing said there were more than 100 VIPs in the parade, including community leaders and politicians.
More than 3,000 people from community groups participated in the parade, and about 50,000 people watched, Ing told The Vancouver Sun.
“It went better than we expected. It started on time and despite the rain we had high spirits. Everybody was enthused,” Ing said. The crowd was even bigger than the year before.”
Vancouverite Aera Jeung was at the parade for her first time.
“The parade is very good, especially the music and the dancing,” Jeung said.
Rabbits in all shapes and sizes celebrated the day. There were rabbit costumes, rabbit face masks and Vancity even had some cars decked out as rabbits.
The Vancouver Police Department Motorcycle Drill Team was a popular participant.
“They are always a crowd pleaser. It’s unfortunate that our streets are very narrow, otherwise they would do more drills, but they were great,” Ing said.
The Chinese New Year Parade has been running in Vancouver since 1974, and is organized by the Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver, with help from Chinese Cultural Centre of Greater Vancouver, Vancouver Chinatown Merchants Association, S.U.C.C.E.S.S., Chinese Freemasons Vancouver Branch and Shon Yee Benevolent Association. |
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發表於 2011-2-7 00:59
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