A bright New Year welcome
Without the ear-numbing firecrackers and boisterous displays of dancing dragons, the Spokane Chinese Association still found a way to entertain about 500 people as they brought in the Year of the Dog.
The Chinese New Year doesn’t officially arrive until Jan. 29, but the association would have had a scheduling conflict at Spokane Community College, so they partied a week early.
The show at Lair Auditorium included everything from comedy to traditional dancing, music and dress. Backstage, young boys waiting to perform invented ways to make noise and slide on their knees down the slick hallway floor.
Performers spent half their time waiting for their cues and the rest of the time trying to shush the boys.
“Our traditional culture is just one big happy family. So they incorporate chaos into that,” said Susan Butler, who teaches Chinese at both SCC and Gonzaga University.
“They are so cute,” Butler said, as the boys in white dress shirts came sliding down the hallway into the legs of a waiting group of traditional Chinese dancers.
The boys finally made it on stage and sang songs while playing hand instruments. Many of them returned for a display of martial arts. The girls mostly tried to stay away from the boys.
Outside the concert, visitors were treated to a culture fair that included tables where they could have their American name painted in Chinese calligraphy. There was also finger food, Chinese paper cutouts and a table featuring the paper-folding art of origami.
It was the fifth year the association held the New Year celebration for the estimated 1,000 local Chinese residents, said Wanping Zhang, 50, who has lived in Spokane for the past 10 years.
“The New Year celebration is very important. It brings all of us Chinese together,” said Zhang, who is a registered nurse at Sacred Heart Medical Center. “The rest of the year we are too busy.”
Speaking of busy, Butler said preparations for the celebration started last August. Organizers would either use a gym on weekends or would use somebody’s basement to prepare the multiple acts.
They included the Dragon Winds ensemble, which featured the playing of Chinese instruments including the steel-stringed Yang-Qin, the two-stringed Er-Hu – known as the Chinese fiddle – and wood blocks that translate into wood fish, because they are shaped like fish heads.
Following the Saturday afternoon show, the group held a banquet at Top of China Buffet, 21 E. Lincoln Road, where traditional dishes were prepared.
While the venue was not amenable to dragons, an oversized panda did make an appearance, Zhang said.
“We get a lot of American people who come here because they have been to China or they are going soon,” she said. “So they get to know the culture a little bit, and they get to enjoy it.”