Precious and ancient traditions passed down as Vancouver Chinatown's Lunar New Year parade hits 50

As the parade celebrates milestone year, some are questioning whether the event is as inclusive as it could be

By: Joanne Lee-Young, Vancouver Sun

Inside the Hon Hsing Athletic Club in Vancouver’s Chinatown, Kenneth Wong hunches over and dots the eyes of two traditional lion costumes with an ink brush.

Two new lions are blessed and given life during a lion eye-dotting ceremony at the Hon Hsing Athletic Club in Vancouver on Jan. 27, 2024. The lions will be used for upcoming lunar new years parade in Chinatown, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Photo by Jason Payne /PNG

Wong’s work was part of a recent ceremony to “wake up” the golden-yellow costumes before this Sunday’s annual Vancouver Chinatown Spring Festival Parade, which coincides with the Lunar New Year.

After a poetic blessing, senior members of the club invited two dozen of its twenty something members to participate in the ceremony, taking pride in explaining how the traditions go back thousands of years, how the fresh green ferns next to the ink and brushes symbolize life and being alive, and how the lion is an important creature in Taoist religion.

The annual ceremony before the parade has been a part of Wong’s life since he was a child.

“Why do I do it? … Tradition,” Wong said. “My dad and the other elders were part of it. They are my inspiration.”

He often watches old videos of parades for rituals that might be easy to forget or set aside.

“I’m always thinking about, ‘What do we need? What have we forgotten?'”

Wong grew up immersed in the Hon Hsing club’s traditions. When the club celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1979, a Vancouver Sun photographer captured a six-year-old Wong, holding a sword and yawning, standing on the street with other kids from the club.

As the parade celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, the practice of passing down rituals — honouring the past — is alive and well.

The lion dance, in which performers use various martial arts to mimic the animal’s movements, remains an integral feature of the parade, a symbol of good luck and fortune.

While San Francisco’s Chinatown may boast the oldest and largest Lunar New Year parade in North America, Vancouver’s Chinatown is known for drawing the largest assembly of lion-dancing groups in Canada.

Some younger and newer participants are eager not only to learn traditional rituals, but also to help the parade evolve and expand.

Over at the Chau Luen Athletic Club, also in Chinatown, newbie lion dancer Leanne Yu started training just last March. This will be her first time in the parade as a lion dancer.

Yu’s father taught lion dancing in Chinatown in the 1980s. But like many other children of immigrants, she initially rejected her parents’ interests, she said.

But something changed during the COVID pandemic. Read more