Roaring Lunar New Year celebrations in Chinatown

Uptown’s Asia on Argyle District held a Lunar New Year Parade over the weekend, complete with Chinese fireworks and dancing dragons. The parade began at noon at Broadway and Argyle, with the Rickover Naval Academy marching band providing the sound of crashing cymbals and drums as a half-dozen people dressed in huge, brightly colored dragon costumes danced fluidly beneath the tracks of the Argyle CTA station. Little red firecrackers capped off the performance, exploding quickly and loudly and drowning the scene in thick clouds of smoke and the smell of gunpowder.

Unlike other parades that move steadily past crowds of onlookers waiting along the sidewalks, the Lunar New Year Parade stopped frequently to indulge in more dragon dancing and fireworks, beckoning newcomers to stop and check it out while others clumped together and ambled close behind. An enthusiastic Chinese man with a thin mustache and a charming comb-over stood atop one of the cars in the procession, enthusiastically shouting “Happy New Year” in English and Chinese as others looked on, confused, pleased or both.

Though the dragons were the most fun to watch, the firecrackers drew the biggest crowds. Sitting in rows of long red strings beneath a wooden frame, the firecrackers themselves don’t look too serious. But the licensed pyrotechnic professional, required by the city to light them, armed with a flame-proof helmet and a huge torch, got people’s attention.

The parade wandered for more than an hour until the people riding atop the cars in the processions found their ways into the Chinese restaurants in the area to gulp large amounts of wine and take pictures with their families. The dragon masks stayed outside, however; they didn’t fit through the doors.