Year of the Dragon

**rpcrowe** · 29th January 2012, 04:55 PM

I had the opportunity to attend the Chinese New Year Parade in Los Angeles, California. The City of Los Angeles has the second largest ethnic Chinese community in California and the third largest in the USA. It is the only planned Chinatown in America. The original Los Angeles Chinatown was torn down to make room for the Santa Fe Railroad Station and Chinatown was moved to its present location a few blocks away. IMO this makes the Los Angeles Chinatown not as picturesque as either San Francisco or New York. However, the broad expanse of Broadway is ideal for parades such as this one.

Although both Nationalist China (Taipeh) and Mainland China (the Rupublic of China) had representatives in the parade, there were no Nationalist or Mainland Chinese flags in the march. There were, however many Nationalist flags flying from buldings and businesses and I spotted only a few flags from Mainland China in the crowds of people and none flying from buildings.

The parade was lead by a contingent of 200 American flags. Here are a few images from that parade, I will post more on my smugmug site in a few days: http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/Other/Chi...3268&k=GDzMXxX

This is a special year for me. The Chinese years are named for animals and repeat the cycle every twelve years. I was born in a Year of The Dragon many decades ago...