Food, fireworks and a lion dance will usher in the Chinese New Year

Forget about the hats and noisemakers and those vintage Guy Lombardo tunes.

The South Bay is about to find out how the Chinese ring in the New Year.

The idea is just about the same, “the end of the old, a new start,” said John A. Bottorff, the owner of a Chinese restaurant at Golden Cove Center in Rancho Palos Verdes and an old China hand who spent 24 years working for the U.S. government in Asia.

But the celebration has its differences, Bottorff says. The Chinese like several days of revelry and a variety of games, and a gaudy and noisy lion dance that symbolizes the good luck everyone hopes the new year will bring.

Indeed, this colorful slice of folk art is expected to be the high point of the free Chinese Lunar New Year Festival unfolding Sunday at Golden Cove for six hours.

Created by dancers from the Immortals Gung-Fu Lion Dancing Troupe, the beast will dance and prance around what is normally the center’s parking lot, which will be transformed into festival grounds by colorful booths for food, arts and entertainment.

The lion’s approach is heralded by “outbursts of firecrackers, beating drums, resounding gongs and crashing cymbals,” said Jeff Chan, director of the Immortals group. All of this noise drives away evil sprits, allowing the lion to bring luck--”an unbeatable combination for anyone, but especially for the Chinese,” said Chan.

Though he is the undisputed star of the festival, the lion won’t be the only performer there. Others will demonstrate Asian martial arts, Chinese brush painting and Tai Chi Chuan, a discipline that combines physical conditioning and mental concentration. Chinese folk dance and choral music will also be part of the celebration.

The first-ever community Chinese New Year festival in the South Bay, according to its organizers, the event is a way of recognizing that the Chinese, and other Asians as well, are becoming a significant part of the South Bay population.

“We have a very large Chinese community in Palos Verdes and in the surrounding area,” said Bottorff. “Palos Verdes in many ways is a multicultural microcosm of the whole Los Angeles area.”

Joining in staging the festival are the city of Rancho Palos Verdes and a variety of Chinese community associations, including the South Bay Chinese Culture Assn. and the South Bay Chinese School of Language and Culture, and several South Bay civic and arts groups.

James Liao of Rancho Palos Verdes, chairman of the culture association, said his group estimates that there are 4,000 Chinese-American and immigrant Chinese families in the South Bay.

He called the Sunday festival a “good chance for people to be together,” adding: “Lunar New Year is more than a Chinese tradition. It is shared by Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, almost every Asian ethnic group. . . . It is like Thanksgiving, a blessing for a bountiful year, and it ushers in the new year.”

Henry Chang of Rancho Palos Verdes said he wants “the festival to become an annual thing.” He and his wife, May, are founders of another group helping to sponsor the festival, the Evergreen Seniors Assn. It was organized five years ago to help elderly Chinese, especially new arrivals who don’t speak English.

The city is providing booths for the celebration and will also sponsor a kite festival at the nearby Point Vicente Interpretive Center. “We’ll help people put kites together and have a kite hospital in case they wreck their kites,” said Phyllis Butts, a city recreation aide.

Though the festival marks Chinese New Year and features Asian fare, Italian and American food will also be available. Several local artists will have booths. Free shuttle transportation will be provided to the festival from nearby parking lots at City Hall, the Interpretive Center and St. Paul’s Lutheran Church.

The date of Chinese New Year varies annually because it is based on phases of the moon. Each year is identified with one of 12 animals, creatures that help Chinese shamen attain heavenly enlightenment.

The Year of the Dragon, whose characteristics are passion and health, is about to give way to the Year of the Snake, a sign of wisdom and intensity.

But what festival organizers want on Sunday is a day of fun. Said Henry Chang: “We want to make it as great as possible with a large Chinese turnout.”

What: Chinese Lunar New Year Festival.

When: Sunday, Feb. 5, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Where: Golden Cove Center, Hawthorne Boulevard and Palos Verdes Drive West, Rancho Palos Verdes.

Admission: Free.

Information: 377-0377