Vancouver Chinatown Lunar New Year parade gears up for 50th anniversary

Huge crowds are expected in Vancouver’s Chinatown for the Lunar New Year Parade and the streets will have some extra illumination to mark the event's 50th anniversary.

More than 100,000 people are expected to visit Vancouver’s Chinatown next month for the annual Lunar New Year Parade and the streets will have some extra illumination to mark the 50th anniversary of the popular celebration.

According to Global News archival footage, the first Lunar New Year Parade wound through Chinatown on Jan. 26, 1974.

Five decades later, the city and the Vancouver Chinatown BIA are preparing to usher in Year of the Dragon with new neon street banners.

The LED banners feature a five-clawed dragon in magenta, blue, yellow and white neon and were installed overnight in the unit and 100 blocks of East Pender Street.

The locally-designed neon street signs are more than two years in the making and were stalled by the pandemic, according to Fred Kwok, who helped create them.

“For the last two years, people keep asking me where’s the dragon sign, you said there’s a dragon sign, where is it, I want to look at it,” said Kwok, who also serves as chair of the Chinese Cultural Centre.

Kwok believes the neon dragon banners are the first of their kind in Canada, and he hopes they will bring tourists to Chinatown.

The five-clawed dragon was a symbol for the emperor in many Chinese dynasties, representing high energy and high status, he said.