San Francisco’s huge Lunar New Year celebration goes on despite Coronavirus fears

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SAN FRANCISCO — As a kid growing up in San Jose, Lance Chong looked forward each year to San Francisco’s Chinese New Year Parade, when he got to be one of more than 100 people who carried the massive Golden Dragon puppet through the city’s streets.

“I would dream about it,” Chong, now 68, said Saturday evening, as he waited to continue the tradition again in this year’s parade — this time as one of the seven people directing the dragon’s head. “The dragon is not just a puppet. It’s made to come alive,” he said. “And for me, it’s been a real source of pride my whole life.”

Elsewhere in the U.S. and the Bay Area, fears over the deadly Coronavirus epidemic that’s infected thousands in China and around the world have led to the cancellation or postponement of Lunar New Year celebrations, calling off festivals and silencing the firework displays that typically ring in the most important Chinese holiday of the year.

But in San Francisco, the celebration went on as planned, with thousands of people filling the city’s downtown for the annual Chinese New Year Parade, the largest and oldest celebration of the holiday outside of Asia.

Some attendees, like Chong, said they felt especially inspired to attend and participate as a show of support for those suffering, and to stand up against xenophobia and racism that has intensified as the virus spreads.

“It’s easy to get scared when you hear something like this, but we can’t let it make us live in fear,” said Chong, who now lives in Oregon but comes back to San Francisco every year for the parade. “It’s another reason to hold the dragon’s head up high.”

Worries about the virus did little to put a damper on the parade, which featured 4,000 musicians, acrobats, performers and other participants. Troupes of dancers swirled colorful ribbons, high school bands marched down Market Street, and lion dancers ran back and forth along the route to cheers.

As twilight fell, the red lanterns that adorned one float bathed the cityscape and the faces of onlookers in crimson, punctuated by energetic drumbeats and the bangs of thousands of small firecrackers, which left the smell of sulfur hanging in the air. Many of the floats featured cute cartoon rodents, encircling a swirling globe or pouring tea, to mark the Year of the Rat in the Chinese zodiac calendar.

Some of the attendees hanging on to the metal barriers along the route — which snaked from Market Street in the Financial District by Union Square and ended at Portsmouth Square in Chinatown — said they had fond memories of participating when they were younger.

“One year, when I was on a float, I smiled so much I couldn’t feel my face the next day,” laughed Michelle Ko, a 30-year-old Union City lawyer who attended with her husband. “Another year, I was dancing with my school, and we were freezing in our silk costumes.”

“So many people have such good memories about this parade,” she added.

Recent Lunar New Year celebrations in Palo Alto, Elk Grove, Southern California, New York City and elsewhere around the country have been cancelled or postponed due to fear over the virus. Much larger events across mainland China were also called off.

While the Bay Area has the most Coronavirus cases of any U.S. metro area — including two people in Santa Clara County and two people from San Benito County who are being treated at a hospital in San Francisco — public health authorities have emphasized that the risk to the general public is extremely low. All of the Bay Area victims had traveled to Wuhan, the central Chinese city that’s ground zero of the epidemic, or were in close contact with a family member who had been there.

The organizers of the San Francisco parade, which is hosted by the city’s Chinese Chamber of Commerce, said they had consulted with health officials and decided not to make any changes to the event due to the outbreak.

“There’s a lot of xenophobia, racism going around lately that anything to do with Asia, you might get infected. That’s absolutely not true, and we definitely want to squash that kind of mentality,” said William Gee, one of the organizers of the parade. “That’s one reason we thought we should go forward — we have an opportunity and a responsibility to promote Chinese culture and inclusion and diversity.”

That spirit attracted families like Mingyao Ding and Lin Gao of Berkeley, who came with their daughters Danica, 5, and Clara, 1.

“This parade brings the community together from all over the Bay Area,” Gao said. “I’m glad they didn’t cancel it.”

While estimates of the crowd size weren’t immediately available Saturday night, several repeat attendees said it felt like turnout was down from previous years, and speculated some people may have opted not to attend because of fears of the virus.

Linh Le, who came with family and friends from Sacramento, said that when she last attended the parade, in 2018, she had to camp out for two hours with blankets and chairs to get a good spot near Union Square. This year, though, she and her companions found a prime viewing area, and still had space to stretch out as the parade began.

The parade’s grand marshal this year was Rev. Norman Fong, who’s retiring this spring after leading the Chinatown Community Development Center, an influential local nonprofit, for 30 years. In an interview, he noted that the upcoming year under the Zodiac calendar is the year of the “metal rat,” as each year is associated with one of five elements in addition to the twelve Zodiac animals.

“The metal rat signifies perseverance,” Fong said. “This is a good year to persevere through whatever trials and tribulations we face. Whether it’s the virus, whether it’s politics or anything else, the message is: hang in there.”