YEAR OF THE RABBIT CHINESE NEW YEAR PARADE

The Year of Rabbit, Lunar Year 4709, is off to a great start.  The Chinese New Year began on February 3rd, 2011 and culminated with the big Southwest Airlines Chinese New Year Parade in downtown San Francisco on Saturday February 19th.

Weeks before the New Year began; students from our four Bay Area Tat Wong Kung Fu Academies already started learning their new routines for this year’s parade.  Featured in our parade team were young Rabbit Warriors performing a Nunchaku routine. But of course these were no ordinary nunchakus….in honor of the Year of the Rabbit, these were ‘Carrot Nunchakus’ The nunchakus were covered in day-glo orange with bright green foil for leaves.  On camera and in the parade they really looked like carrots! And also making our Rabbit Warriors really stand-out were their light-up LED rabbit ears.  Of all the hundreds of rabbit ears in this years parade, ours were the only ones to light-up the night! KTVU and KTSF, the television stations that broadcast the parade loved our nunchakus and ears and applauded our creativity. 

Also this year, our older advanced student warriors performed three different weapon routines, Chain Whip, Sword and Kwando. Each was performed with the highest level of skill and power and was perfectly synchronized.  And of course filling out our very colorful and exciting parade team were our Lion Dancers, musicians and our fabulous flag carriers.

As the day of the parade date grew closer, our students from our San Francisco, San Mateo and Concord Academies joined together for parade rehearsals held at our Headquarters at 601 Clement Street in San Francisco.  This was the time to fine-tune our staging and performance timing for the cameras.  And as usual, the Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy had a special featured performance slot during the LIVE TV broadcast by both KTVU FOX 2 and KTSF Channel 26.
  
With the help, support and hard work of our instructors, students and their families, the Tat Wong Kung Fu Academy looked amazing during the parade!

Thank You to everyone who participated and made the parade great!

Special thanks to Tricia Catiggay and Theresa Reyes for their many hours of sewing and gluing our rabbit ears and to all our wonderful parents that helped with the costumes and makeup.  And also, special thanks to Thomas So for our fabulous parade photos.

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