The second annual festival is part of a full slate of weekend events.Goodbye to the dog; hello to the pig.
Bainbridge’s second annual Chinese New Year celebration ushers out the Year of the Dog and welcomes the Year of the Pig this weekend with an array of events that include a parade, traditional foods, crafts, film, theater and dance.
The event is the brainchild of islander Randi Evans and Bainbridge Island Chinese Connection, the group she and her husband, Bill Evans, helped found.
Randi Evans was born in China, grew up in Taiwan and moved to Hong Kong as an adult. She immigrated to the United States, settling on Bainbridge in 1996.
She soon noticed that while Bainbridge didn’t have many residents of Chinese heritage, there were more than a few islanders with a China connection.
“We suddenly realized that there are a lot of people from the Island who have been to China, lived there, taught there,” Evans said. “Many have a lot of experience.”
In 1997, Evans and her husband advertised a picnic to gather islanders with ties to China, and 14 couples responded. The group dubbed themselves the “Old China Hands.”
Every year since, they have gathered in early February to celebrate the Chinese New Year with food and shared reminisces.
The gatherings were so much fun that they decided to share the event with the community.
“The Japanese have their Mochi Festival, the Filipinos have their celebrations. And China is an up-and-coming country. People want to know about it,” Randi Evans said. “So that’s how it started.”
The Old China Hands formed Bainbridge Island Chinese Connection with the emphasis on fun, not fund-raising.
Having a good time is the traditional way to bring in the new year.
The Chinese New Year celebration – in contemporary China called Spring Festival, and still the country’s most important holiday – follows a 12-year cycle with the year represented by a particular animal.
The animal for the new year, the pig, represents loyalty and intelligence.
Many of the features of the holiday held the first two weeks in February are meant to invoke good luck for the coming year. Events like the 1,000 year-old Lion Dance bring good fortune for dancers and viewers alike.
“The lion is a mythical animal in the Chinese culture,” Evans said. “It’s supposed to be very powerful. They come and expel all the bad spirits and evil things, and bring good luck.”
This year’s celebration on Bainbridge features a Lion Dance to be performed by Bainbridge High School students. The students have been working toward the festival since last October, traveling every week to Seattle to learn kung-fu with a master teacher in the tradition of the physically demanding dance traditionally performed by martial arts practioners.
Anyone with a pig or dog in tow is welcome to join a parade, which Evans hopes will see the turnout of as many as 1,000 bicyclists.
“A lot of people on the island talk about non-motorized transportation,” she said. “In China, the way most people still get around is by bike.”
Another tradition to be honored at the celebration’s craft booths will be the penning of “couplets,” poems welcoming the spring, and invoking longevity and good luck. The poems, written in Chinese characters on red, vertical strips of paper, are placed to either side of the entryway of Chinese homes and businesses.
In China, the holiday opens with a feast that sees even far-flung families converging to eat a meal together and worship their ancestors.
Foods are often symbolic, like the dumplings commonly known as “pot stickers,” eaten because their scalloped crescents echo the gold nuggets used for currency in pre-Communist China. At the Bainbridge celebration, food booths will offer such traditional fare.
Then, of course, there are the firecrackers.
At 11:59 p.m. of New Year’s eve, whole neighborhoods are tableaux of suspended animation, as Chinese pause, matches in one hand, fuse in the other, for what Evans calls “a deadly competition” to set off the first firecracker at the stroke of midnight and have the most luck in the coming year.
Here, the Bainbridge community as a whole makes a bid for good fortune, as Mayor Darlene Kordonow lights a firecracker on everyone’s behalf at midnight.
In addition to the parade and booths featured last year, this year’s celebration has expanded to include a night of traditional Chinese performing arts, including Peking Opera, introduced by Seattle’s Melody Xia Dancers.
Another important feature of the Chinese New Year is one that Evans fondly recalls: receiving the red envelopes that contained cash.
“We loved to go open the doors the first day of the Chinese New Year when relatives or friends came to visit,” she said. “Because that’s when the elder generation would give these huang-bao that usually have some money in there to the kids. So we’re all excited to be the first one to say ‘oh, Uncle Wu, happy New Year’ and get an envelope.”
But the kids gave something as well; they were expected to pay a debt of respect to parents. The homage was tangible, Evans recalls, with children kneeling before parents, head to floor, in the traditional ‘kow-tow.’”
For Evans, and for the Bainbridge Island Chinese Connection, celebrating the Chinese New Year is also a small lesson in respect.
“We’re introducing the Chinese culture,” she said. “Like calligraphy, the poems, how Chinese families respect the elders.
“This is a fun community thing and everybody chips in to have a good time– and in the meanwhile, learn something about China.”
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Festive weekend
Enjoy an evening of traditional Chinese artistry with a collection of performances including Peking Opera, Ribbon Dance, Sword Dance, Tai Chi and classical Chinese music, 7 p.m. this evening at City Hall. The performance is appropriate for kids over 10. The festivities continue with a community festival on Winslow Way, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday. Events include a Lion Dance, parade, food and cultural booths and more. Volunteers are needed as parade guides, food servers and for street cleanup. Information: www.bichineseconnection.org.
