Cities Ready for Chinese New Year Event
A parade, all-day festival and up to 20 phone booths where people can make worldwide long-distance calls for free will be featured at the San Gabriel Valley’s first official Chinese New Year parade and festival Saturday.
The celebration’s highlights include a lion dance, a fan dance, Cantonese and Mandarin opera, a singing performance by Hong Kong entertainer Sunny Wong and a karaoke sing-along. California Secretary of State March Fong Eu will be grand marshal of the parade.
Having put a controversy over sponsors behind them, organizers said Wednesday that things were running smoothly.
Last week, objections to the Bicycle Club, a Bell Gardens casino invited to enter a float in the parade, touched off a string of protests. Alhambra Mayor Mary Louise Bunker and Monterey Park Mayor Sam Kiang had said the casino presented the wrong image for their civic celebration.
But other officials and business leaders questioned why the casino was a problem when other floats were sponsored by alcoholic beverage companies. The casino operators ultimately decided to stay out of the parade, which will pass through Monterey Park and Alhambra.
Kiang said he will propose that future parades ban hard liquor, tobacco and gambling companies as sponsors.
“The biggest thing will be the phone booths,” co-chairman Paul Talbot said Monday. “The minute MCI decided to do it, AT & T and (U.S.) Sprint jumped in.”
Each person will be limited to one call per company, Talbot said. The calls can be from three to five minutes, depending on the company, organizers said.
Banks, restaurants, real estate companies and other groups have donated more than $100,000 to pay for everything from programs to flower arches to adorn the parade route, co-chairman Raymond Cheng said.
The event is being billed as a suburban alternative to Los Angeles Chinatown’s long-established New Year parade, to be held Feb. 15.
BACKGROUND
Chinese New Year, based on the lunar calendar, occurs on the second new moon of winter, which fell on Tuesday. Celebrations usually begin the next weekend, as does the San Gabriel Valley parade this Saturday; the Chinatown New Year parade is Feb. 15. According to the Chinese calendar, this is the year 4690. According to the Chinese Zodiac, this is the Year of the Monkey. The zodiac is based on a 12-year cycle, each year named after a different animal. Persons born under the sign of the monkey are said to be very intelligent and able to influence people. They are enthusiastic achievers, but easily discouraged and confused.
Chinese New Year Celebration
The parade begins Saturday at 10 a.m. and will end about 11:30 a.m.
The art festival on Valley Boulevard will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. There will be music, a fashion show and dance performances on two stages, and international food, arts and crafts booths between Garfield Avenue and 4th Street. Admission to the festival area is free, but fees will be charged for some activities.
Free parking wil be available in Alhambra at Ramona Elementary school, 5th street and Valley Boulevard, and at Moor Field, 7th Street and San Marino Avenue. Elsewhere, city street parking rules must be observed.
