Shortly before noon, the dancers departed their headquarters at the San Diego Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, crossed Third and Fourth Avenue, and entered the festival with traditional costumes and musical instruments.
Those watching at the Fall Back Festival would be entertained by the performers’ exciting entrance and the following lion dance.
The Lucky Lion Dancers perform at many San Diego events, and I never tire of watching them. The energy, joyfulness and magical good vibes…anyone who watches is indeed lucky!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
If you love color, culture, food and fun, you should head over to Balboa Park tomorrow, Sunday, February 16, 2025. The second day of the Chinese New Year Fair, hosted by the House of China, will be taking place at the International Cottages!
I walked through the free festival today and photographed a wide variety of cool sights. In addition to the vendors of ethnic food and unique gifts, and the colorful cultural entertainment, the Hall of Nations features artists who are showcasing traditional Chinese art, including calligraphy, brush painting and gourd decoration. I found plenty of references to the Year of the Snake!
There’s something new and exciting to see everywhere visitors turn.
Sunday the entertainment lineup runs from 11 am to 4 pm, with lion and dragon dances and dancing by various groups, plus fashion models, music and more!
These three young journalists were at the event. Write, write, write! Start a blog! Be curious! Be persistent! Be passionate! You never know where your efforts might lead!
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I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Chinese New Year is being celebrated this weekend with a festival in downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter. 2025 is the Year of the Snake!
The 42nd Annual San Diego Chinese New Year Fair is a free cultural event taking place along two city blocks by the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum. The food, entertainment, lion dancing and more can be found at the corner of Third Avenue and J Street–the center of San Diego’s Asian Pacific Thematic Historic District.
I’ve been under the weather the last couple days, but I found the energy today to walk down from Cortez Hill to experience a little bit of the fun. I snapped these photos.
A special exhibition is wrapping up tomorrow in Gallery 21, at Balboa Park’s Spanish Village Art Center. I caught it just in time!
The Friends of the Chinese Brush Annual Art Exhibition features paintings by artist Lucy Wang and a group of her students. Lucy Wang works out of Spanish Village’s Studio 4.
I admired the work of Lucy’s students on the gallery walls. Two students at a table were busy creating beautiful sunflowers!
If you’d like to take Chinese brush painting classes in San Diego, check out this web page. Classes are held on Sundays.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
Several detailed scale models at the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum show what life was like for the Chinese inhabitants of early San Diego. Visitors can peer at these meticulously constructed scenes and imagine walking through the city over a century ago. San Diego’s Chinatown is historically bounded by Second and Fourth Avenues.
After entering the museum, the first model I noticed was of a Chinese fishing village that once existed where today’s San Diego Convention Center stands. The fishing village included small shanties, drying racks and salting tanks. Here it is:
The next two photos show a model of San Diego’s old Chinatown along Third Avenue, between Island Avenue and J Street. This amazing model, which represents the years 1910 to 1920, is based on photos, documents and former residents’ descriptions.
A sign in the museum explains: Notice the red batik wall… That building was an opium den according to the 1890 city directory. The large building with an awning a few doors down were the Woo Chee Chong and Gim Wing stores. The two story building on the other side of the street was Chinatown patriarch Ah Quin’s house, where he and his wife raised 12 children.
Next is a model depicting the back of the Woo Chee Chong Company at 450 Third Avenue. Like other Chinese stores in early San Diego, groceries and various goods were sold downstairs, and the upstairs rooms were available for let.
Finally, visitors can peer down into a very detailed model of a Chinese laundry in San Diego.
Between 1886 and 1970, there were over 100 Chinese laundries in San Diego… Opening a laundry was the quickest way for Chinese immigrants to become their own boss without needing to speak much English or having much money. All it took was a little soap, water, and hard work.
Apart from the model, this exhibit includes artifacts like old irons. There is also a map of the known laundry locations and various historical descriptions.
Anyone interested in the important role the Chinese played in our city’s history, including aspects of their life, work and culture, really should visit the small but excellent San Diego Chinese Historical Museum!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X.
In the last couple weeks, several street lamps in the form of traditional Chinese lanterns have been replaced along Third Avenue in downtown San Diego. Third Avenue, between Market Street and J Street, is the heart of the Asian Pacific Thematic Historic District.
The original Chinese lanterns were installed in the 1980s, back when the historic district was first designated. Those lamps, however, had deteriorated over time and were badly in need of replacement.
Sadly, these beautiful Chinese lantern street lamps no longer run the entire distance to Market Street. I was told the City of San Diego disposed of several of the old lanterns that might have been given to the museum and also refurbished.
The San Diego Chinese Historical Museum has retained one of the newly refurbished lanterns for safe keeping as you can see from my next photograph. It will be used as a model for future lanterns, if money can be raised to produce them. Recreating them from scratch will be, unfortunately, fairly expensive for the nonprofit museum. (Would you like to help?)
The museum would also love to create an Asian Pacific Thematic Historic District gateway on Market Street. Chinatowns in other cities feature such gateways.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!
Dragons and lions have invaded San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter this weekend!
The colorful “Chinese New Year Faire San Diego” is being held downtown, on 3rd Avenue and J Street near the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum. The annual festival is hosted by the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association. The event seems to grow larger every year!
It’s the Year of the Dragon, and there’s one enormous dragon moving sinuously through the crowd. And lucky, happy lion dancers parading down the street, too!
Up on the stage there are school kids in costume dancing and ladies smiling during a Chinese fashion show. Thao French, whose amazing Year of the Dragon art you’ve seen in Little Saigon recently, is spray painting another dragon mural. There are vendors everywhere, activities for young people, and no shortage of yummy food. Kung Fu Panda is greeting one and all, too!
(I won a beach ball spinning a prize wheel! Can you beat that?)
You can view the program schedule for this weekend by clicking here. The Chinese New Year Faire San Diego continues tomorrow–Sunday, February 25, 2024.
Enjoy these photographs from Saturday morning!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!
A big Chinese New Year event is taking place this weekend in San Diego!
The Year of the Dragon, 2024, is being celebrated at the Chinese New Year Festival in Balboa Park. Hosted by the House of China, plenty of fun, cultural entertainment and ethnic food awaits families at the International Cottages!
I visited today and took a bunch of colorful photos that you might like.
The annual Chinese New Year event in Balboa Park always attracts a huge crowd. The list of performers is long–there is music, fan dancing, theater, and a traditional, crowd-pleasing Chinese New Year’s lion dance, of course!
Unique gifts, crafts and Chinese calligraphy lessons can be found among the many booths. There’s enough going on to keep the family occupied for much of the afternoon. Grab a dumpling, a boba tea, a good seat on the lawn, and enjoy!
The event continues tomorrow, Sunday, February 18, from 11 am to 5 pm.
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!
Those who love art should head over to Spanish Village in Balboa Park soon. An exhibition by the Chinese Brush Painting Society of San Diego can be enjoyed inside Gallery 21. The Flow of Ink and Color will be on view through Monday, October 9.
I gazed at fine works by seven members of the society, and wondered how the human hand can produce such beauty.
Talking to Wendy Nakamura, one of the artists, I learned that one thing distinguishing Chinese brush painting from Japanese brush painting is the color palette. I also learned how traditional brush art can inspire contemporary, more brightly colorful or abstract pieces.
Wendy demonstrated how she handled a brush to quickly render an image of bamboo. Visitors are invited to try their own hand!
I noticed many displayed pieces are for sale. Do you collect beautiful art, or simply love to view it? Swing on by!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or X (formerly known as Twitter)!
Cool San Diego Sights! 