Michelle Yeoh Ignites Lunar New Year Drama: From LA’s Firecrackers to Bath’s Bows

Max Sterling, 2/22/2026Explore the vibrant contrasts of Lunar New Year celebrations in Los Angeles and Bath. From the explosive Golden Dragon Parade to intimate gatherings of the Hong Kong diaspora, each locale showcases a unique expression of tradition, resilience, and community connection. Celebrate the enduring spirit of cultural heritage.

Mamie Hong Weinberg, the parade's chair (she wears a few other hats besides), practically buzzes about the spectacle. “They’re martial artists as well—so highly skilled. It’s amazing!” she declared over the festival's din. Anyone who’s witnessed a lion dancer throw a high kick in a hail of red paper can’t really argue.

Parade themes, at their worst, can fall flat—platitudes pressed onto banners for a few requisite headlines. "Unity in the Community" might read like something from a city council press packet, yet in 2025, the mile-long surge of salsa troupes, ballet folklórico, and float-riding dignitaries gives it teeth. This isn’t corporate branding; it’s Chinatown hurling open its doors and daring every Angeleno—Latino, Chinese, Anglo, and all points in between—to get swept up in the fun. And swept up they are. Call it an organized maelstrom, equal parts martial artistry and grand, sticky-fingered block party. If Mardi Gras is permission to loosen ties, then the Golden Dragon Parade is a kinetic handshake that doesn’t let go until the last firecracker fizzles.

It would be a mistake to think celebration is all volume, though. Over in Bath, England, the Lunar New Year stands quietly resilient beneath low winter skies. The Hong Kong families who gather there, far from the electric roar of big-city festivals, piece together something smaller but—perhaps—more urgent. Paper lanterns stretch the bounds of pastel walls, laughter tumbles between strangers who haven’t yet found the English word for “just like home.” Origami cranes and the careful press of ink on rice paper become tethers holding memory together—a bit of resistance tucked into tradition.

For many in Bath’s Hong Kong diaspora, especially those who arrived in Somerset after the turmoil of 2019, these moments are lifelines disguised as craft sessions. “It is very warming,” says Teresa Lee, once new to these shores herself, now a well-worn guide for others learning to decipher British quirks. “A bit like Christmas,” she muses—except here the gifts are old songs and the comfort of a table crowded with familiar faces, even if the ceiling still feels borrowed. The parade in LA thunders. In Bath, the feeling settles in slow: a gentle but persistent assertion that, amid all the change, roots hold firm.

There are students from Bristol—lion dance in miniature, complete with applause from across a host of accents. The celebrations here are less about spectacle, more about preservation and a quiet acknowledgment that change, though relentless, needn’t mean erasure. For Cherry Lee, there’s always this balancing act: integrating into the rhythms of Somerset life while fiercely tending the flame of tradition—Hong Kong Chinese, specifically—for the next generation. Her son Owen, wise to the stakes for a teenager, says it simply: “It brings everyone together to celebrate.”

Stepping back, these two poles of celebration—one shot through with noise and color, the other gentle but unyielding—reveal themselves as less oppositional than twin expressions of the same cultural pulse. They’re both acts of endurance, not nostalgia: refusing to let history dissolve into the ever-shifting background noise of modern life. In LA, that resistance is blisteringly loud, impossible to ignore. Bath's answer arrives in paper cranes and brushstrokes—quieter, maybe, but just as steady.

The ritual of expelling last year’s bad spirits—blessed are the firecrackers—works its magic whether echoed off downtown LA's brickwork or folded into English afternoon stillness. It isn’t really about bells and whistles, not entirely. Somewhere in the racket (or between sheets of calligraphy), what emerges is a kind of contract with self and community: another year, and the unseen ties hold.

So the Lunar New Year lingers as something more than a marker on a lunar calendar. It morphs, flexes, survives. Whether it’s glamoured by gunpowder and parade floats or carried softly in the ink of handwritten hopes, the message is always clear enough. Belonging doesn’t arrive in a single shape, nor does tradition demand only one voice. Let the noise roar, let the silence settle—so long as someone remembers, the celebration endures. In 2025, that’s as vital as ever.

If tradition ever needed living proof that it could stride forward in more than one tempo, the Lunar New Year has long answered the call. Try standing beneath the pulse of Los Angeles Chinatown in February—125-plus years now counting, the Golden Dragon Parade doesn’t so much march as detonate. The sidewalks hum with restless anticipation, the air is still sharp with firecracker smoke, and dragon dancers snake their way through a crowd that doesn’t bother with the concept of "personal space." To call it "a parade" barely covers it; it's an annual collision course where history and riotous present collide, stitched together by confetti and community muscle memory.Mamie Hong Weinberg, the parade's chair (she wears a few other hats besides), practically buzzes about the spectacle. “They’re martial artists as well—so highly skilled. It’s amazing!” she declared over the festival's din. Anyone who’s witnessed a lion dancer throw a high kick in a hail of red paper can’t really argue.Parade themes, at their worst, can fall flat—platitudes pressed onto banners for a few requisite headlines. "Unity in the Community" might read like something from a city council press packet, yet in 2025, the mile-long surge of salsa troupes, ballet folklórico, and float-riding dignitaries gives it teeth. This isn’t corporate branding; it’s Chinatown hurling open its doors and daring every Angeleno—Latino, Chinese, Anglo, and all points in between—to get swept up in the fun. And swept up they are. Call it an organized maelstrom, equal parts martial artistry and grand, sticky-fingered block party. If Mardi Gras is permission to loosen ties, then the Golden Dragon Parade is a kinetic handshake that doesn’t let go until the last firecracker fizzles.It would be a mistake to think celebration is all volume, though. Over in Bath, England, the Lunar New Year stands quietly resilient beneath low winter skies. The Hong Kong families who gather there, far from the electric roar of big-city festivals, piece together something smaller but—perhaps—more urgent. Paper lanterns stretch the bounds of pastel walls, laughter tumbles between strangers who haven’t yet found the English word for “just like home.” Origami cranes and the careful press of ink on rice paper become tethers holding memory together—a bit of resistance tucked into tradition.For many in Bath’s Hong Kong diaspora, especially those who arrived in Somerset after the turmoil of 2019, these moments are lifelines disguised as craft sessions. “It is very warming,” says Teresa Lee, once new to these shores herself, now a well-worn guide for others learning to decipher British quirks. “A bit like Christmas,” she muses—except here the gifts are old songs and the comfort of a table crowded with familiar faces, even if the ceiling still feels borrowed. The parade in LA thunders. In Bath, the feeling settles in slow: a gentle but persistent assertion that, amid all the change, roots hold firm.There are students from Bristol—lion dance in miniature, complete with applause from across a host of accents. The celebrations here are less about spectacle, more about preservation and a quiet acknowledgment that change, though relentless, needn’t mean erasure. For Cherry Lee, there’s always this balancing act: integrating into the rhythms of Somerset life while fiercely tending the flame of tradition—Hong Kong Chinese, specifically—for the next generation. Her son Owen, wise to the stakes for a teenager, says it simply: “It brings everyone together to celebrate.”Stepping back, these two poles of celebration—one shot through with noise and color, the other gentle but unyielding—reveal themselves as less oppositional than twin expressions of the same cultural pulse. They’re both acts of endurance, not nostalgia: refusing to let history dissolve into the ever-shifting background noise of modern life. In LA, that resistance is blisteringly loud, impossible to ignore. Bath's answer arrives in paper cranes and brushstrokes—quieter, maybe, but just as steady.The ritual of expelling last year’s bad spirits—blessed are the firecrackers—works its magic whether echoed off downtown LA's brickwork or folded into English afternoon stillness. It isn’t really about bells and whistles, not entirely. Somewhere in the racket (or between sheets of calligraphy), what emerges is a kind of contract with self and community: another year, and the unseen ties hold.So the Lunar New Year lingers as something more than a marker on a lunar calendar. It morphs, flexes, survives. Whether it’s glamoured by gunpowder and parade floats or carried softly in the ink of handwritten hopes, the message is always clear enough. Belonging doesn’t arrive in a single shape, nor does tradition demand only one voice. Let the noise roar, let the silence settle—so long as someone remembers, the celebration endures. In 2025, that’s as vital as ever.