VANCOUVER, Canada (AFP) — Chinese New Year celebrations began here last month with the skirl of Scottish bagpipes, and will wrap up Sunday as Chinese dragons parade alongside South Asian dancers.
Worldwide, the Year of the Rat will officially be trumpeted on Thursday. But over the last decade, there has been a mixing of cultures that observers say makes the annual festivities in Vancouver unique.
With nearly 40 percent of the population in some neighbourhoods of this Pacific Coast metropolis of 2.2 million having Chinese ancestry, Chinese culture has long had a high profile.
The city's annual parade highlights how multiculturalism has altered traditional the Chinese New Year's fete.
The event began decades ago "with just Chinese people," said Syrus Lee, the promoter of festivals in the city's historic Chinatown. "But it's become really multicultural."
On February 10, said Lee, the downtown parade will feature traditional Chinese performers alongside North American aboriginal groups, groups from the Philippines, several South Asian cultural performers, at least two traditional British pipe bands and a lion dance by members of the Vancouver Police Department.
New Year's kicked off in mid-January, when pipers, Chinese dragon dancers and chefs began preparing for "Gung Haggis Fat Choy."
A play on the Chinese New Year greeting and haggis (a giant Scottish sausage), Gung Haggis Fat Choy commemorates the January 25 birthday of Scottish poet Robbie Burns and Chinese New Year.
The Scottish-Chinese merging is visible year-long, with a Gung Haggis Fat Choy team in popular local dragon-boat races.
Gung Haggis Fat Choy was begun in 1994 by local resident Todd Wong, who was a student and tour guide at Simon Fraser University at the time and decided that the coincidence of Burns's birthday and Chinese New Year occurring within days of each other was a good reason for a party.
For the past decade, Wong has organized an annual feast, attended by some 400 residents of all ethnicities, that merges traditional Scottish and Chinese foods, Scottish music and dragon dances.
Lee, who works at a regular job in a city library, said he began Gung Haggis Fat Choy to bridge lingering divisions between ethnic groups.
Today, he noted, Vancouver has many cross-cultural marriages and families, and "the new generations of Canadians are growing up with Chinese and Scottish DNA. This is a great way to combat racism."
For those swept up in this melange of cultures, traditions and races, Vancouver's multiculturalism seems simply normal.
"Vancouver is a breeding ground, it's not assimilation, it's more a combination, a mixture of cultures," said Anny He, a grade 10 Canadian student of Chinese parents, who plays the Scottish bagpipes in the junior division of the local Simon Fraser University pipe band.
"It's not about losing our heritage, it's combining it with something that your culture didn't have, it's about learning new things," said He.
Henry Yu, a professor of history at the University of British Columbia here, said Vancouver is unique in the world with a mix of ethnic Chinese and Europeans that is nearly equal, and "one of the highest intermarriage rates in North America ... glued on to a long history of conflict."
British Columbia province is "not unique in dealing with racism," said Yu, "but what's unique is how much farther we've gone."
On February 7, He said she plans to celebrate Chinese New Year's with her family and friends -- but only after she's finished her daily practice on the Scottish bagpipes.
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
