Year of the Dragon in Boston’s Chinatown

Traci Tong in the Year of the Dragon celebration in Boston.

I love that for one day, every year, I get to be in the middle of the best party thrown in Boston’s Chinatown.

And it’s all because of Chinese New Year. Well, technically, the Lunar New Year. And this year is the most important of the Lunar New Year zodiac signs — the Year of the Dragon.

There are 12 animals in the Lunar Zodiac line up — the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog and boar. But it is the dragon that represents everything important to the Chinese culture — wisdom, power and wealth.

To welcome in each new year and new animal, dancers will get underneath decorative paper lion heads, or carry poles holding up a clothed serpent like dragon and make their way through the streets of Chinatown. They’re all dancing to the thundering of drums and the crashing of cymbals. Firecrackers are thrown at your feet, scaring the beejeezus out of you. All of this intended to chase away those evil spirits.

The lion dancers will stop in front of a restaurant, a shop, or any type of business that wants you. The lions are given heads of lettuce and often oranges to “eat” which they then toss back out to the audience symbolizing the sharing of the wealth and good fortune. Hidden underneath the lettuce is a red envelope with money, payment to the dance troupe for chasing away the bad luck.

You’ve never seen so much produce strewn in the streets of Boston’s Chinatown.

These lion and dragon dances date back to roughly the third century BC when the dancers would go from village to village. It requires a lot of strength, endurance and artistry and it’s so physically demanding that women were not allowed to participate.

Thankfully, that didn’t stop Cheng Imm Tan, a reverend and director of The New Bostonians with the city of Boston.

She started the Gund Kwok troupe — the only Asian Women’s Lion and Dragon dance troupe in the United States. Gung Kwok means “heroine” in Chinese and the troupe was established to allow Asian women to express their power and creativity through the lion and dragon dances.

At the end of January, our troupe, more than 20 of us, braved the chill and the wind for seven-and-a-half hours, as we visited more than 100 establishments in Boston’s Chinatown.

We were cold, and sore, weary… but it was all worth it.

The highlight was inaugurating our new seven-person dragon named Goldie — with me at the head for the first time ever and during most auspicious of all years and animals.

Next year: the Snake. I don’t know if I want to be in that head.

Happy New Year!