Main St. in Flushing Was Hopping For the Lunar New Year Parade

This year the Lunar New Year arrived earlier than usual but was still well received by the thousands of parade revelers on Main St. in Flushing. The Lunar New Year is one of the most important holidays in mainland China and the tradition is passed on from generation to the next right here in Queens. This is the Year of the Rabbit, the Black Water Rabbit to be exact. Flushing is one of the most diverse neighborhoods in NYC with hundreds of churches and great restaurants in the area. This parade is more inclusive of the different Asian cultures that celebrate the holiday with Koreans, Malaysians and Taiwanese marching with traditional costume.

As usual, this is an early parade that kicked off at 11am with the NYC Police Marching Band leading the way with representatives of the Jade Police Officers Organization and Korean Police Officers Association soon to follow. One of the best things about neighborhood parades that is some of the local merchant and civil groups in the area send their people to represent. Some groups had dancing lions and weaving dragons that would greet the crowd. Some media groups arrived with banners claiming to bring uncensored news from mainland China. The largest group of the parade was Falun Dafa. This is their turf so to say as Flushing is home to many of their meetings and festivities. As always they displayed many fine cultural costumes and floats and has one of the best marching bands in the city. Towards the end of the parade route, by Queens Crossing, a large crowd gathered for the contained firecracker explosions letting everyone know the New Year has arrived. Since I was in the area, I couldn’t help but to head over to Prince St. for some of the best restaurants in Flushing.