Wikimedia Commons/Webster & Stevens
Seattle’s 160-Year Lion Dance Legacy Since 1860s
Seattle’s Chinatown has kept a 2,000-year-old tradition alive since the 1860s. Chinese immigrants brought lion dancing with them, a practice dating back to the Han Dynasty.
By 1930, colorful lions danced along Seventh Avenue South during Lunar New Year, with shop owners offering red envelopes of money wrapped in lettuce leaves—a play on words since “lettuce” sounds like “fortune” in Chinese.
In 1921, the community even held a week-long Go-Hing carnival featuring these dances to help famine victims back in China…