Spring Festival

Spring Festival, better known as Lunar New Year or Chinese New Year, is the celebration of the start of the Lunar calendar. Since this is based on the cycle of the moon, the date on the Gregorian calendar fluctuates each year.

From my personal experiences celebrating the holiday in a small city in China, the main celebration takes place on New Year’s Eve and Day, with many smaller meals with family and friends to honor the holiday, until the final large celebration at on the last day of the Festival about 23 days later.

Since I moved back to the U.S. about 3 years ago, I have wanted to go to a Lunar New Year celebration in San Francisco Chinatown, but each year year something would come up to prevent me from going. This year I decided to invite some friends and make a plan so that I would actually make it. Thankfully one of my friends was willing and able to go with me and nothing got in the way for us to attend.

Planning

Since I live in the Valley, I knew I only wanted to spend one day in the city. I started my planning with a simple google search for ‘Lunar New Year Collection in SF.’ There were several events that came up over a few different weekends such as a street fair, a Miss Chinatown competition, and a parade. After reading about the events and seeing which week ending had the most to offer, I decided I wanted to go for the street fair and the parade on February 8^th.

According to the websites I visited (ChineseParade.com and sftouristtips.com), the main event of the San Francisco Spring Festival is the Parade and it is one of the top ten parades in the world. I was also hopeful that there would be great street food, interesting vendors, and cultural performances at the street fair, so I wanted to check it out as well.

We decided we oiled head to the city between 9-10 am to avoid the morning traffic and plan to head back to the valley around 7/7:30 for the same reason.

*When we began planning and when we attended this event, knowledge of the Covid 19 pandemic was not what it is today. It was over a month later that our towns began locking down. I had checked the Parade’s website the night before and the morning of the event to see if it had been canceled. I, perhaps naively, believed the city would cancel the event if there was a credible health threat. Neither of us experienced Covid 19 symptoms after the event.

Travel

Since there were only two of us going, my friend and I were able to make more spur of the moment decisions about our day. We texted each other when we were up and ready to go. We carpooled to the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station, which took about an hour including a quick bathroom stop at a nice gas station on the way. Since my friend flies out of SFO often for work, she knew a good spot.

I had forgot to look up the BART station nearest to Chinatown. I knew it was near Union Square and, as it had been at least a year since I had been to the city, I mistakenly thought there was a stop called Union Square. Since there wasn’t a Union Square option, I had us get tickets with enough money to get to Union City – a completely different Bay Area city. Once we got to the platform and were waiting for our train, I decided to look up the BART station for Chinatown and found out it was Montgomery. Opps, we had plenty on our tickets to get us there and just had to add a couple dollars to our tickets for the ride back.

We looked up walking directions to Dragon’s Gate, the entrance to Chinatown, and it took us less then 10 minutes to walk there. I am a slow walker and part of it was up hill, so it those in better shape than I could probably go much faster.

As soon as the Jade color dragons came into sight, I noticed there were red lanterns hanging above the streets, and I started to get quite excited. We walked down one more block and came upon the market.

The Street Fair

I tried not to come to this event with too many expectations, but I had hoped to get some good, authentic street food and see traditional art. The sites I visited had mentioned that there would be street performers at the fair, so I also hope to see some dancing and maybe even acrobatics.

The first section of the fair was full of companies doing give aways to celebrate the New Year. We saw lots of cheap looking cloth bags with the logos from the giveaways sponsors, and other small trinkets. Neither of us was interested in collecting all these items, especially considering many of the booth had lines, so we continued down road. There were a couple other booths selling various other items such as “the world’s best slicer,” kitchen items, and Bamboo linens. There were also a couple booths with a bunch of stuffed animals, red envelopes, and various rat trinkets as it is the year of the rat. This reminded me of the Sunday markets that took place in my Chinese hometown where vendors would sell these sorts of items along with fruits, vegetables, and meats.

We came across one street food vendor who had a few time I recognized, but there wasn’t anything that looked especially appetizing to either of us. Since we weren’t super hungry yet, and I was hoping there might be more options, we kept going.

I noticed a small stage down a side road with some dancers, so we stoped to watch for a bit. It was a group of girls, likely elementary age. We only managed to see the end of their performance, but we did receive several ‘coupons’ – worth a free appetizer and dessert if you bought at least two dishes.

On our way back to the main road, we heard drumming and went towards it and got to see some lion dancers and drummers up close. The lions were very colorful and fun, but we noticed the drummers didn’t look very happy. As everyone was crowding in very close to one another to get a good look, I was reminded of one of my least favorite parts of life in China.

After that, we finally made it to the end of the main part of the street fair. While I was disappointed that there weren’t more food vendors, there was a great section for photos near the end with red envelopes lining a wall spelling out, ‘blessing’ in mandarin. There was also a lion costume hanging up so I was able to get a good picture and look at it a bit more closely.

We finally decided to find some lunch. As we were heading back to the food vendor, my friend asked what I thought about going to a restaurant we had seen earlier with seating on a balcony near the stage. It sounded good to me, so we headed over.

We couldn’t see the stage from where we were seated, but the view was still nice and there was some nice music playing in between the magician and Kung fu demonstrations we couldn’t really see. The food was good, but not exactly what I had been hoping to find. As we had expected, we had to order main courses in order to get our free appetizer and dessert, which ended up being four dumplings and a scoop of green tea ice cream. We split a lettuce wrap beef dish and another dish – that I can’t remember now because I procrastinated writing this for so long. It was all very good.

Once we had rested and ate our fill, we went back to the street fair. There were a couple booths we hadn’t seen, but as we started to go by we realized they were basically the same thing. My friend suggested me walk around some of the other parts of Chinatown. It was fun to see people out shopping for their groceries and pass by the little shops similar to ones we had both seen in Asia. We then got some Boba tea and sat for a bit before heading to the parade route.

The Parade

About an hour and a half before the parade started, we headed over to the beginning of the parade route. This was the perfect spot for us to watch the parade as it would end there first and it was right next to the BART station entrance. The city workers had started setting up temporary fences along the street, blocking some of the crosswalks, and making sure there wouldn’t be any unauthorized vehicles on the route.

We found a spot in front of a newspaper stand by the curb of the sidewalk. This was a great spot because it gave us a spot to sit if we wanted and something to lean on while we were standing. We had to wait about 90 minutes for the parade to start. It was slightly later than the scheduled time, but well worth the wait. There were marching bands, floats, Chinese language and dance schools. The one part I wasn’t crazy about was the fleet of classic cars carrying members of the city government. I like looking at old cars, but I didn’t know most of those people and seeing people wave in a car isn’t that exciting to me.

The kids dressed up, traditional dancers, and music were wonderful. The parade got stalled at one point with and a float playing Peking opera music was stuck in front of us, which is not my favorite, but the rest of the parade was highly enjoyable. There were a lot of lion and dragon dancers as well as some drummers. The tradition clothing, dragons, and lions were a variety of beautiful colors. And the Cal Poly marching band was excellent. I would love to see them again someday.

A little before 8, we started to get quite cold and I was thirsty, so we agreed to head back. From what we could see, there were still floats lined up at least half way down the street towards the ferry building. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was at least another hour of the parade.

See my videos on my Instagram @snicketfan.

Recommend?

Assuming such things are permissible again, I would like to go again next year, but I would change my strategy. The parade is the highlight of the Festival and since it doesn’t start until about 5:30, there isn’t a need to get there as early as I did. Next year, I would try to get there around 4:30, find some food and then find a spot to watch the parade. If the street market sounds like something you would enjoy, you can probably see it all in a couple hours. However, from my experience I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it. The wall at the end was a nice spot for pictures.