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Monterey Park Celebrates New Year With Lantern Festival

By Jon Chang | Special to AsianWeek

Many children vividly remember Chinese New Year as a time of firecrackers and red envelopes stuffed with lucky money that they receive from relatives. Young adults may see Chinese New Year as a time to pay respect to ancestors, see family and show off a newborn daughter or son. Grandparents may view Chinese New Year as a time to give thanks for long life, health, prosperity and family.

Whatever your most vivid memory of Chinese New Year’s celebrations may be, the 2003 Chinese New Year Lantern Festival of Monterey Park, Calif. has something for you and you don’t have to be Chinese or even Asian, for that matter.

According to Brian Dowling, Monterey Park’s Business Redevelopment Project manager and one of the Lantern Festival’s organizers, “the Lantern Festival is a time to showcase Monterey Park and its unique stores and their wares. However, Monterey Park also wants to attract mainstream American business as well, because today’s second- and third-generation Asian Pacific Americans want choices. They can freely move about between both cultures. As an example, a Chinese American might have lunch at Ocean Star [a local Chinese restaurant], while dinner would be eaten at Macaroni Grill.”

This year’s Lantern Festival sponsors also reflect this diversity. They are comprised of both international, national and local companies including Wells Fargo, Coca-Cola, General Motors, the Los Angeles Times and Vitasoy, as well as innumerable local businesses.

The Monterey Park Chinese New Year Lantern Festival is held Saturday, Feb. 15 and Sunday, Feb. 16, on the last days of the Chinese New Year celebration. This year’s Lantern Festival features a variety of pan-Asian groups such as a Malaysian dance troupe, Thai singing, Korean folk dancing and drumming and Arabic music and belly dancing, as well as Chinese cultural booths, singing and dancing groups. The highlight of the festivities will be the lion and dragon dances, which will be performed on both days.

The origins of the lion and dragon dances are steeped in China’s agricultural societies, traditions and superstitions. Both dances depict the lion and the dragon dancing playfully and happily. Both animals signal to the community that the upcoming year will be one of prosperity, good luck and good fortune. In Chinese folklore, the dragon is a mythical animal which controls water, rain and weather. Therefore, a dragon dancing merrily is a sign that good weather, water and crops are to come in the new year. Dragons are also seen as noble, royal creatures. Finally, the loud firecrackers and drumming, which accompany the dragon and lion dances, are mechanisms of good luck and prosperity, meant to ward off the evil spirit Nian.

Monterey Park holds the distinction of having the highest percentage of APAs and Chinese Americans in Southern California. Sixty percent of Monterey Park’s 60,000 residents are of Asian descent, with Chinese comprising 45 percent of the total population.

Shirley Huang Batman, the chairperson of Monterey Park’s Chamber of Commerce and one of the principal organizers of the Lantern Festival, sees the event as a cultural bridge. “The Chinese New Year Festival lets people know about the tremendous diversity and resources that America has to offer. Yet, at the same time, it expands our definition of what and who are Americans.”

Reach Jon Chang at jonntexas@netzero.net.