Chinese New Year parade slithers through Vancouver to kick off Year of the Snake

Lion dancers and firecrackers stirred up a crowd of about 50,000 people who lined the sidewalk Sunday for the annual Chinese New Year parade.

Ashley Williams, 20, has watched the event every year since she was seven. She remembers seeing celebrants kick off the Year of the Dragon in 2000 from the window of her mother?s store on East Pender Street, Ming Wo Cookware.

Click here to see a photo gallery from the parade

?You get to see a lot of the Chinese traditions,? she said. ?It brings a lot of people into Chinatown and reminds them about their identity, because people can forget.?

She said the parade is a celebration of community but also an educational experience for the whole city. This year, as in the past 13 years, her mother hung a head of lettuce with a red-wrapped wad of cash inside from the store entrance. Lion dancers from one of the benevolent associations came by Sunday morning, bowed to the three-eyed lion heads in the display windows, trouped through the store to bless the premises and collected their donation.

?They do it to bring luck to everyone for the year related to the store,? Williams said.

The parade presented a cavalcade of multicultural emblems ? red envelopes, Japanese taiko drums, even Scottish bagpipes ? as the celebration slithered clamorously through downtown Vancouver to ring in the Year of the Snake.

Embodying the cultural mosaic were red-and-gold-bedecked participants bearing the national flags of both China and Canada. They performed a Tai Chi Kung Fu fan routine while behind them mustachioed brass band musicians from the Burnaby Fire Department blared a marching tune.

Community group members mingled with lion dance troupes ? the largest annual assembly of them in Canada ? in the signature event of Vancouver?s Chinatown. It is the third largest such celebration in North America.

Jenny Li and her son Johnny were attending for the third time.

?It?s fantastic, especially for the kids,? Li said. ?It was very good to refresh our memories of Chinese culture.?

?I loved it,? exclaimed Johnny, who at age 12 was born in 2001, the last Year of the Snake. ?All the candy, and the snakes and the dragon dance, too.? ?Lion dance,? his mother corrected.

Dotting the procession were unofficial envoys from other cultural groups, including Vietnamese Canadians and banjo-picking Americans. Volunteers handed out red envelopes stuffed with candy ? not cash ? as Chinese firecrackers clacked on the pavement to inaugurate the Lunar New Year.

A 15-metre electro-mechanical snake slithered along the route. The self-propelled serpent, a project sponsored by the eatART Foundation, sports an enormous aluminum head and red tongue and added a technological edge to to the parade as its pistons, gears and wires ? bound in red tape for the occasion ? moved in slithery sync.

The parade drew 60 entries and 3,000 participants, including many from outside of the Chinese community.

Run primarily by the Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver since 1979, the parade started earlier this year, at 11 a.m., to accommodate its growing size, continuing for 2 1/2 hours.

The 1.3-kilometre route began at the Millennium Gate on East Pender Street (between Shanghai Alley and Taylor Street), proceeded east along Pender, turned south onto Gore Street then west on Keefer Street, dispersing on Keefer at Taylor Street.

After the parade, the festivities continued with multicultural performances at the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

creynolds@vancouversun.com

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