Year Of The Pig Roars In On Whitney

Lions, dragons, and luck danced down Whitney Avenue Saturday.

The parading helped celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year, welcoming the Year of the Pig as part of New Haven’s eighth annual Lunarfest.

The Yale-China Association, the Yale Council on East Asian Studies, and the New Haven Museum organized the event.

The day’s festivities included a shadow puppet show, traditional Chinese opera, dance and martial arts workshops, and a lion and dragon dance parade. The Wan Chi Ming Hung Gar Institute from New York City performed the lion dance, while students and employees from the John C. Daniels, Cooperative Arts and Humanities, ACES Educational Center for the Arts, ACES Wintergreen Magnet School in Hamden, and the Yale Asian Network made the dragons.

Dar Assaf fed one of the lions a red envelope for good luck …

… as did mother and son Hayoung Kim and Eli Lee.

Andre Roberts, Juan Villalta, James Mitchell, Vincent Destefanis, and Malwin Davila carried a dragon….

… to the rhythm of Blue Steel Drumline members Davionne Matthews, Alexus Lee, and Irvin Johnson’s bass drums.

David Youtz, president of the Yale-China Association, told the crowd just how lucky this year’s Lunarfest is – the number eight is the luckiest number in China, and at this year’s Lunarfest, New Haven’s eighth, the combined total of dragons and lions was eight, and there were eight downtown venues for the celebration.

And Mayor Toni Harp stepped forward to express her wishes for the New Year. ​“Every year I am so happy to see those beautiful lions! Have you ever seen a lion wink like that and wag their tail? It is so much fun! On behalf of the city of New Haven and its residents, please accept my best wishes for all good things throughout the Year of the Pig.”

Then the crowd gathered around a twenty-foot pole, and one of the lions climbed to the top …

.. .and ate lettuce from the end of a stick and spat it out leaf by leaf.

Confetti filled the air as the lions wished the crowd a lucky Year of the Pig.