Lantern Festival 2024
Pacific Renaissance Plaza
Oakland
Feb. 24, 2024
Across the Bay, with great anticipation and fanfare, Awkwafina served as grand marshal of the San Francisco Chinese New Year Parade. But in Oakland’s Chinatown that same weekend, I enjoyed a quieter, more intimate celebration of the Lunar New Year at the Lantern Festival. There were fewer crowds, fewer dancing dragons, and no fireworks — it felt like a world away from the San Francisco scene.
With less flash, I found more time to reflect on the meaning behind the holiday, and an appreciation of the immigrants and culture that this time is meant to celebrate. I felt like I had the literal and metaphorical space to honor what’s meant to be a time of “love, hope, and solidarity.”
When I first arrived at the courtyard of the Pacific Renaissance Plaza on the late Saturday afternoon (the Lantern Festival was held both Saturday and Sunday), booths were set up next to a performance area, where a young spoken word artist was performing a piece called “Refugee Daughter.” She spoke about China as a “middle country,” and how the flight from her homeland was “more turbulent than the one I took from my mom’s womb… Who is my ally, anyway?” In the audience, older Chinese locals sat and listened. It seemed like a community event that was truly for the community, where they actually outnumbered the tourists.
Down another corridor of the plaza, I wandered into a quiet, dimly lit room set up as a “space for healing and reflection.” There was a circle of chairs and pillows to sit on. A woman poured traditional tea for guests, as an “authentic living coach” gave a subdued oracle reading. Chinese New Year is often thought of as a fun, loud, exuberant event. But this was meant to be a more thoughtful affair than the parade in San Francisco, or even than the one I attended last weekend in Oakland.
On one wall of the same room was what looked like a makeshift mini-museum. There were photos and stories from local Chinese immigrants and their children and grandchildren, who remembered Oakland’s Chinatown from decades ago up to today. An altar on the adjacent wall featured a three-dimensional paper dragon; guests were invited to write down prayers on paper leaves to attach to a prayer tree watched over by the dragon. I pray for peace, abundance, love, and solidarity in the AAPI community, read one. I pray that I stop stuttering, read another.
There was also a sense of celebration even here. As the sun set, the Tribe of the Dragon Dance hip hop crew from San Mateo performed, popping and locking to the music on the loudspeakers, to the delight and applause of the growing crowds. More people filled up the area, buying food and other goods from the stalls set up in the plaza.
There were other, encouraging signs of activity in the neighborhood. It certainly needs it. A friend of mine was nearly robbed while stopped at a light in her car nearby, just last weekend. But tonight, I walked around feeling unperturbed. It’s not unusual for a neighborhood or a city to feel differently at different times. Even with all the other festivities going on in other parts of the Bay Area, Chinatown in Oakland tonight was full of diners, cars, and traffic. Feeling peckish, I strolled to a restaurant nearby to join in.
