Washington, D.C

How the annual lion dance draws Chinese Americans back to D.C.’s Chinatown

Published

2 years ago

February 9, 2024

How the annual lion dance draws Chinese Americans back to D.C.’s Chinatown

Harry Guey-Lee doesn’t go into D.C.’s Chinatown much these days. Although he grew up there, he mostly returns for occasional Washington Wizards games.

But every winter, the same activity draws him back: the lion dance at the Lunar New Year parade.

The performance, a vibrant spectacle meant to scare away evil spirits and bestow good luck, brings together Chinese Americans in the historic part of downtown where many of their parents and grandparents had lived and socialized. Year after year, families that have scattered to the suburbs reconnect with their heritage in a place that long ago ceased being a community focal point.

“We care about the little bit of connection we still have to our past and our parents and the cultural traditions that are part of Chinese culture,” said Guey-Lee, who lives in Silver Spring, Md. “It’s a little bit, but we hold on to that little bit.”

Guey-Lee, 73, is among roughly 50 members of the Chinese Youth Club who will step to a beat, play instruments and wave flags as part of a traditional lion dance at the parade Sunday. While several other lion dance troupes will also perform, the CYC’s team is the oldest in the District.

The dance is a family tradition for some. Guey-Lee’s father played the drums during the early years of the parade in the 1940s before passing the torch to his sons, who carried kung fu weapons, served as the lion’s tail and played the cymbals.

Now, the children of Guey-Lee and his brother also participate — and teach the next generation. People of all ages have a role: Toddlers carry flags, teens and young adults dance in the lion costumes, and older adults hold banners, play instruments and hand fortune cookies to spectators.

The origins of the lion dance, which dates at least from the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-906), are disputed. One story tells of villagers scaring away a monster with an animal costume, firecrackers, and pots and pans. Another recounts an emperor who dreamed of an animal and ordered that it be re-created for festivals.

The resulting dance, which has roots in martial arts and is traditionally taught to boys, is an athletic endeavor that takes significant energy. During the parade’s half-hour performance, dancers rotate in and out of the lion costumes to give each person a break — especially from carrying the wooden heads, which can weigh up to 10 pounds.

“If you just jump in there and try to go 100 percent, you’re going to get tired really fast,” said Kevin Lee, Guey-Lee’s nephew and one of the co-directors of this year’s dance.

Technique is important, and the performers under each lion’s head and tail are instructed to make their movements lively, Lee said. The instrumentalists and dancers work in tandem, with the music cuing specific steps and the person under the lion’s tail following the dancer under the head.

The team rehearses eight to 10 times before the parade, with younger dancers practicing first at each session. When the older dancers get their turn, instructors teach more advanced moves and critique form. The performers do squatting exercises to prepare for some of their movements during the show.

Ada Stuyvenberg, 12, said the hardest part of being a lion in the parade is, well, acting like a real lion.

“You really have to do very quick movements, all while being smooth,” said Ada, who lives in Rockville, Md. “You can’t be like a robot.”

Her mom, Daphne Pee, learned about the dance troupe from a neighbor last year and was thrilled to find the kind of Chinese American community that she didn’t get to experience while growing up in Montgomery County. Now she plays cymbals in the parade while her children dance.

Pee, 46, said the activity helps her children stay connected to their Chinese culture.

“For the parents,” she said, “we’re trying to keep that alive in them.”

The old-timers ensure the troupe stays true to traditions, like “dotting the eyes” of each new lion head by dabbing red ink on various parts to bring it to life. When the team members leave a business after dancing there to bless it, they back out as a sign of respect, rather than turning away from the audience.

Virginia’s Vietnamese Americans get head start celebrating Lunar New Year

But in other ways, much has changed since Chinese immigrants established the CYC in Chinatown in 1939. When Guey-Lee’s father immigrated from Taishan, a city in China’s Guangdong province, the organization was one of few groups offering structured socialization opportunities for the neighborhood’s young people.

The CYC functioned like a Chinese YMCA, with volleyball tournaments and Chinese classes, among other activities. Each Lunar New Year, the organization’s lion dancers spent hours going store to store to bless Chinatown’s businesses while their owners lit firecrackers and gifted the performers cash in red envelopes.

Jack Lee, Guey-Lee’s brother, joined this tradition as a preteen and remains involved in the dance troupe decades later. While he doesn’t feel as Chinese as he would like, he said performing is a way of “staying connected to Chinatown, as well as staying connected to my culture.”

Unlike cities like New York and Toronto, D.C.’s Chinatown no longer feels particularly Chinese. Chinese architectural motifs still decorate shops and an archway celebrating the relationship between D.C. and its sister city of Beijing looms over H Street, but few Chinese immigrants live there.

Many residents began to move out of the area in the 1960s in search of better housing and business opportunities and lower crime rates, according to a report from the University of Maryland. The area became the focus of government renewal projects in the 1970s and ’80s, and after the sports arena now known as Capital One Arena was built in 1996, shops and restaurants catering to spectators flooded the area. Many long-standing businesses were priced out.

Lee and Guey-Lee felt those changes personally: The townhouse their parents lived in was razed for the arena’s construction. The neighborhood, Guey-Lee said, is “obviously a shell of what it once was 35, 40 years ago.”

Most people in Chinatown participated in the lion dance back then, he said, and attracting new performers was easy. Now, it’s harder to spread the word. The D.C. area’s Chinese Americans have scattered to the suburbs and don’t have as many organic opportunities to meet. Children are busier than in previous generations, and those who live outside the city need parents to drive them to dance practices.

Wally Lee, whose father was one of CYC’s founders, said many children a few generations removed from the immigrant experience feel more American than Chinese and may not know about the lion dance.

“It’s only through word of mouth or being involved in our club where they see it in person and they hopefully will have an interest to try it,” said Wally Lee, 75, who is not related to Jack Lee and his family. “So it’s tougher than back in the old days.”

The CYC tries to meet children where they are, recruiting players on the organization’s sports teams to the dance troupe and sharing the program at schools’ “international day” events. The lion dancers also perform at other events throughout the year.

Kevin Lee, 37, said the performance can be an avenue for young people to engage with their heritage in ways that feel less like work than learning Cantonese or Mandarin.

“There’s definitely Chinese school and things like that,” he said. “This is another way into the culture.”

The dance is also open to people without Chinese heritage. Organizers said they welcome anyone who wants to experience their traditions and have had people of other backgrounds join the group.

This year, one family of lion dancers is from Peru.

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Washington, D.C

Army Corps: Reservoir expansion ‘doesn’t fix, but improves’ DC’s drinking water supply for future Potomac River emergency – WTOP News

Published

8 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Press Room

Army Corps: Reservoir expansion ‘doesn’t fix, but improves’ DC’s drinking water supply for future Potomac River emergency – WTOP News

Developing a regional solution to enable all local water companies to share drinking water in the event of a future Potomac River emergency remains a long-term challenge facing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. But the Corps is leaning-in to near term solutions, for now, because current issues “are quite, quite dire.”

In an interview with WTOP, Trevor Cyran, Chief of the Civil Works project management office of the Baltimore District Corps of Engineers, elaborated on the Corps’ ongoing three-year feasibility study funded by Congress and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

Last week, during a House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee hearing, lawmakers pressed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to explain what’s being done to secure solid backup options for the D.C. region’s drinking water.

D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton challenged the Corps after learning that the study that Congress authorized to identify a secondary water source for the region was being narrowed to only expanding the current Dalecarlia Reservoir, adjacent to the Washington Aqueduct, which remains the only source of drinking water for D.C., Arlington, and parts of Fairfax County, Virginia.

“Expansion of the reservoir is not a secondary water source,” Norton said. “With only a one day of backup water supply, human-made or natural events that make the river unusable would put residents, the District government and the regional economy at risk.”

Cyran said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers doesn’t disagree.

“We’re trying to find a quick win that addresses some of the near-term issues, because they are quite, quite dire,” Cyran said. “The Dalecarlia expansion would add approximately 12 hours of water storage into the system,” he said. “So, while we know that doesn’t fix the problem, it improves the situation.”

Recently, drinking water in D.C., Northern Virginia and Maryland has remained safe because the January collapse of a portion of the aging Potomac Interceptor regional sewer line happened downstream of the main Potomac River water intake serving the Washington Aqueduct.

“We’ve moved forward with the Dalecarlia expansion, as our most probable recommendation,” said Cyran. “The Corps is laser focused on delivering something right here, right now that can actually help with the issue, while still exploring some of those long term solutions.”

Cyran said the dangers to public health and the economy are substantial, with the Potomac as the sole drinking water source. “It’s not a great situation — we’ve seen a very real risk come to fruition recently, with the spill.”

While drinking water has been unaffected by the spill, the advisory for the public to avoid contact with the Potomac River remains in effect in the District and Montgomery County, where the Potomac Interceptor spill happened, along the Clara Barton Parkway.

The advisory is expected to be lifted Monday, by the D.C. Department of Health, as E. coli levels have recently returned to the typical range for D.C.’s rivers. The District’s Department of Energy and Environment is now doing daily testing of the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers.

How would increased storage at Dalecarlia Reservoir look?

According to the Army Corps, expanding the Reservoir over 54 available acres would provide approximately 70 million gallons per day, doubling the capacity at Dalecarlia. Since the land is already owned by the Washington Aqueduct, it would not require acquiring any land.

Cyran said it’s not yet certain whether the expansion would provide an extra 12 hours of storage of raw water from the Potomac, or finished water, after it had gone through the Washington Aqueduct’s water purification process.

Regardless, either option would result in the Aqueduct having more water on hand, if drawing water from the Potomac was suddenly unsafe.

Another near-term option that wouldn’t require land acquisition would be advanced treatment, Cyran said.

“We could implement something that allows us to treat for a wider array of contaminants, if you had a spill,” said Cyran, although noting the recent spill from the Potomac Interceptor, which poured approximately 240 millions of raw sewage into the Potomac, “might not be a good example” of how the technology would work.

The Army Corps list of possible solutions includes reusing water. In November 2025, DC Water outlined its own plans to recycle water from the utility’s Blue Plains Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest of its kind in the world.

Quarry storage cannot happen quickly

During its ongoing study, the Army Corps has identified possible long term regional solutions, including the potential use of the Travilah Quarry in Montgomery County, Maryland, and two quarries in Loudoun County, Virginia, owned by Luck Stone.

10 years ago, in December 2016, WTOP first reported that the Travilah Quarry, located on Piney Meetinghouse Road in Rockville, was quietly being considered by DC Water, WSSC Water, and Fairfax Water, as an alternative source of water, if the Potomac River were unavailable.

“The three utilities, and the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin, along with the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments have been working over the last several years to look at alternatives to get better interdependencies, to have more resilience in our system,” said Tom Jacobus in 2016, while he was general manager of the Aqueduct.

Now, a decade later, the logistical, real estate, and financial challenges of obtaining a quarry which could be interconnected between DC Water, WSSC Water, and Fairfax Water remain.

“We’re not saying they can never happen, we’re just saying they cannot, in any way, shape, or form, happen quickly,” said Cyran. “Travilah is still an active quarry, so that can’t even be considered for storage until they’re done mining, which might be 30 years from now.”

The Dalecarlia Reservoir expansion would not be regional solution, Cyran said.

“That would only benefit folks who are tied directly to the Aqueduct at this time,” he said. “However, while we’re going to be looking at other alternatives that we could potentially spin off and continue to look at, that would address some of those more regional issues.”

‘We can’t hand half-baked ideas to Congress’

While an interconnected, resilient system, that could provide additional water sources and storage to DC Water, WSSC Water, and Fairfax Water would be optimal, Cyran said the Corps is limited by a Congressional paradigm that limits its feasibility study to four years and five million dollars.

“We can’t hand half-baked ideas to Congress,” Cyran said.

With the Corps’ current focus of implementing near-term improvements, quickly, the agency will continue to use its expertise to envision a more resilient, long term solution.

“We are committed to looking at this issue and try to explore some regional solutions, within the paradigms of the legislation that we have to operate within,” said Cyran. “If Congress wants to consider something else to expand our authority, we could maybe look at a bigger solution, with more time and money.”

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Washington, D.C

New AAPI-led Jaemi Theatre Company launches in DC

Published

20 hours ago

March 1, 2026

Press Room

New AAPI-led Jaemi Theatre Company launches in DC

Jaemi Theatre Company, a new AAPI-led theater company based in Washington, DC, officially launches this spring with its inaugural project, BAAL, a staged reading at the 2026 Atlas INTERSECTIONS Festival on Friday, March 6, at 7:30 PM at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

Jaemi Theatre Company co-founder and playwright Youri Kim

Founded by Artistic Director Youri Kim and Artistic Associate Juyoung Koh, Jaemi Theatre was born out of a recognition that DC, one of the largest theater markets in the United States, had no company dedicated to centering Asian stories or led by Asian artists. The name “Jaemi” comes from a Korean word meaning “fun,” and in its Sino-Korean form, 在美, means both “to live in America” and “to live in beauty.”

“I kept hearing from companies that it was hard to find Asian actors, and I heard it so often that I started to believe it myself,” said Youri Kim. “But through building community with other AAPI theater artists in the area, I realized the talent was always here. What was missing was the infrastructure to connect us. Jaemi is that infrastructure.”

BAAL, an original work written by Youri Kim (not to be confused with Bertolt Brecht’s 1918 play of the same name), is a body horror drama set in a dystopian city where the air is toxic and birth is outlawed. In the city of Baal, citizens are forced into an impossible choice: terminate or sacrifice a family member. The play uses the language of biological mutation and bodily control to examine how systems of power decide who gets to exist and on what terms, questions that resonate deeply within AAPI and immigrant communities navigating structures that seek to define, contain, and assimilate them. The staged reading features a cast of seven and an original sound design.

BAAL plays as a staged reading Friday, March 6, 2026, at 7:30 PM in Lab Theatre II at the Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H St NE, Washington, DC). Tickets ($29.75) are available online.

Looking ahead, Jaemi Theatre plans to host a founding party and fundraiser this fall, and will launch an Asian Writer Play Submission program in the second half of 2026. The program will pair playwrights from selected Asian countries with Asian playwrights based in DC for a workshop development process, building a pipeline that connects diasporic voices across borders.

For more information, visit yourikimdirector.com or follow @jaemitheatre on Instagram.

About Jaemi Theatre Company
Jaemi Theatre is a newly formed AAPI-led performance initiative based in Washington, DC, co-founded by Artistic Director Youri Kim and Artistic Associate Juyoung Koh. “Jaemi” is Korean for “fun” and, in its Sino-Korean form, means “to live in America” and “to live in beauty.” The company creates interdisciplinary performance rooted in diasporic imagination and radical storytelling. Jaemi is a home for the unfinished and the unassimilated, where performance holds contradiction without needing to resolve it.

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