Sweet and Sour

Forget 2001. It’s 4699--the Year of the Snake, according to the Chinese calendar, a system that’s been in place for quite a while.

To celebrate, a Chinese New Year celebration is slated for Friday night at the “Knights of Columbus Hall in downtown Ventura.

The event was held for the first time last year at the city’s American Legion Hall and drew hundreds of folks, causing this year’s move to a larger facility.

The free program, which should last about 90 minutes, will include Chinese dancers, drums and music, highlighted by a performance of the lion dance.

In addition, local historian Richard Senate will discuss the significance of the Chinese New Year and expound on the history of the local Chinatown district, which once stood in the area where the celebration will take place.

Connie Brose, who owns the Goldlion Gallery in downtown Ventura, is once again organizing the event.

“The performers, folk-dancers and musicians are all from the Chinese American Culture Club,” Brose said. “Hopefully, this will become an annual thing.”

Senate, an 18-year city employee, is the offical historian for the city of Ventura and a proficient storyteller who often leads historical tours downtown. He recently discussed the significance of this event.

So this is the Year of the Snake?

Yes. The Chinese New Year is the biggest holiday in historical China. Last year was the Year of the Dragon, which was a big one, but the Year of the Snake is a good one too--very propitious. If you celebrate it at this time, it will assure you of having good luck all year. In old China, the celebration could last up to a month--it’s a big party. There’s food, special dances, special parades--they shoot fireworks off and scare away the evil spirits. You have to pay all of your debts--there’s a lot of preparation for the new year. They have special dances, including the famous dragon dance.

But Friday, they’ll be performing the lion dance, not the dragon dance?

They can’t do the dragon dance because it takes 80 or 90 men. Instead, they’ll do the lion dance, but that’s a really interesting one because it’s more athletic. They do all sorts of neat tricks--they jump and tumble. There will also be traditional dances the women used to do in old China, and some Chinese music.

Talk a little about Chinatown in old Ventura.

We had about 200 Chinese people living in this block from about 1866 to 1923. In fact, this event will be held literally on the location of the old Chinatown. They had businesses, barbershops and restaurants--pretty much a self-contained community. The Chinese had a whole bunch of stuff there, even their own temple.

What sort of work did the Chinese engage in?

The Chinese were either merchants or servants to the wealthy class, had laundries and cooked in restaurants, but the vast majority were farm laborers. The first migrant farm workers [here] were Chinese, not Latin Americans. They picked and planted lima beans, which were a big crop then. They planted orange trees and dug a lot of the irrigation canals, some of which are still in existence today. They introduced strawberries to this area. We owe them a great debt. The large Latin American population didn’t start coming up here until around 1910. Even though California was part of Mexico, it was never densely populated. The Chinese were a very visible part of early California, but unfortunately, they were also the victims of prejudice and many outrages.

What happened to Chinatown?

It burned up. The city condemned it, saying it was a bad area of town, and they burned it down in the 1920s. So a lot of the Chinese packed their bags and went over to Oxnard, which was a new city at that time. The prejudice against the Chinese in California was greater than the prejudice against the blacks in the South. Can you imagine such a thing? But in Ventura, they did find one man who stuck up for them and tried to eliminate the prejudice, and who became famous later as a writer. He was Earle Stanley Gardner, who created Perry Mason. In his early years as a lawyer, he frequently defended the Chinese population in Ventura and Oxnard.

There are still Chinese in the area, but no Chinatown.

Right. The Chinese today are spread all over, not concentrated in one area. They were an interesting, hard-working part of California, and I think it’s high time we give them more accolades. The Chinese were the first non-European culture to come to this area. I like to think the whole story of the Chinese is a success story. I hope the event will bring to light Chinese culture. It should be a lot of fun, and people will come to realize that not everyone uses our same calendar.

DETAILS

Chinese New Year celebration and lion dance at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 36 S. Figueroa St., Ventura; Friday, 6:30 p.m. Free. 653-7955.

Bill Locey can be reached by e-mail at blocey@pacbell.net.